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by starkraving



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternative Werewolf Lore, Derek is a Good Alpha, F/F, F/M, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Kidnapping, M/M, Make it better, Of the Werewolf Variety, Pack Dynamics, Psychological Trauma, Rape Aftermath, Team as Family, and its just aint happening because fuck you thats why, bad things happen to derek, but he's twenty-three so he's also an idiot, derek is big brother to literally everyone, reluctant alpha derek, tries to be a responsible adult
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-08
Updated: 2016-12-07
Packaged: 2018-08-29 19:23:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 5
Words: 27,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8502349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starkraving/pseuds/starkraving
Summary: AU where Derek doesn’t build a pack after Season 1 and, instead, tries to leave Beacon Hills entirely. Unfortunately for him, Scott McCall is a kid with really persuasive puppy-dog eyes and Derek feels obligated to stick around and make sure he's okay. Naturally, disaster strikes. An exploration of slightly alternative werewolf lore and what would happen if Derek was more reluctant to be an alpha… and if the Alpha Pack found him alone.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> WARNING: This work contains explicit non-consensual sexual violence and graphic physical violence. Non-explicit reference to child-abuse and past underage relationship.

When he wakes up, they’re already in the house. Their boots fall heavy, suddenly, in the foyer, penetrating through the comfortable fog of REM and Derek snaps awake immediately. Instinct locks him still. He fell asleep on the couch in the living room, the one that didn’t burn and still smells, faintly, like his family. He lies perfectly still, pretending that he hasn’t woken, fighting to keep his breathing even, his heartrate dead-asleep steady. There are four of them. They’re standing in the hallway, in the door to the living room where he’s lying and there is no way they don’t know he’s there.

“We know you’re awake,” says one of them, a woman. Accent. He can smell coconut oil in her hair. “Come on and stand up, we’re not going to hurt you.”

He hears her heart tick once, twice too fast. Not the tick of a lie. Just… _excitement_. He knows the sound, what kind of things it’s precursor to. Derek Hale rolls off the couch to all fours and launches from that runner’s crouch into a hard sprint across the room for the second entry to the back of the foyer. He makes it through the door. Dives low, skidding a hard baseball slide right under the grabbing swing from a man that stands a foot taller and wider than him, waiting for him in the hall. He can smell heat, that ionic stink of the change, the animal musk, and he knows he can’t let them catch him.

Derek hits the opposite wall with his sneakers, kicks off into a backward somersault. The big guy lunges but Derek hard-leaps straight up to the second floor from his landing crouch, grabbing the railing and yanking himself up and over. He lands flat on the floor and it’s only then that his fear catches up with his body. His guts clench up and dread striates the sinews of his throat, making it hard to breathe. Lying on his belly, flat, panicked in his childhood home, he tries tell himself somehow he will be fine.

“He’s fast,” says one of them. Younger. Sounds like a teenager maybe, Scott’s age.  

“We’re faster,” say another who sounds identical, but from a second location in the hall.

Derek gets his hands under his body, gets ready to run. “One chance,” he snarls, “to leave before I kill one of you.”

“Again, we aren’t going to hurt you. Just come down.”

“You’re lying.”

“We aren’t going to _kill_ you.”

“Oh. Well, in _that_ case.”

Derek gets up and sprints for the master bedroom, slamming the door and locking it behind him. There’s a window to the roof by the bed. He yanks it open and ducks out onto the crumbling slant of the roof shingles outside, sneakers sliding slightly on the leaves and debris as he runs full speed down the incline of the roof toward the open lawn of the back yard. He can hear them sprinting around the front of the house. He’ll have one chance. So he running leaps off the top of the house, the sheer momentum and force launching him nearly fifty meters out and buckling the rafters from the point of launch. He lands, rolling into the impact, then comes up full out sprinting.

They’re still right behind him. Three of them. They’re already changed and gaining. Derek shifts, first stage, his body lighting up along the bones, and doubles his speed. Hitting 35 MPH on foot, he breaches the edge of the trees and zig-zags into the woods. He hears the big one straight up smash through part of a rotten tree, juggernauting after him. The other two are gaining, cutting lightning fast tracks through the underbrush on either side of him, flanking him, herding him toward an eventual killing floor. They’re fast. All of them. They’re so goddamn _fast_. None of them have shifted alpha, but they probably don’t think they need to.

They’re going to catch him. The knowledge that they are going to catch him – that’s worse than the acidic pulse of his heart, the sulfurous drag of his breathing. He thinks about going full alpha, knows he doesn’t have time to shift on the fly, knows he hasn’t practiced it enough.

“Stop running!” One of the smaller ones.

“Yeah, just stop!” The second one laughs.

Derek ignores them, hooks a hard right and dive-rolls through the ferns, feels claws rake his jacket but miss his back. Someone hits the ground hard and tumbles, cursing, through the bushes. Derek just takes off again, a tiny pleasure in the sound of the other two getting mad at the one who missed him. With his three second lead, he pulls his phone from his right jacket pocket and snaps it half, hurls it into the trees. With his two second gap, he flips a pocket knife open in his palm. With his one second gap he shifts deeper into the wolf and when the second smaller one lunges, Derek spins and slams the blade home so hard he breaks ribs and leaves the whole knife half up the hilt in his attacker’s chest. A scream, but Derek’s hurdling the body and running. Blood on his shirt.

One down, but very briefly and the other two are all over him. Instantly. Closing his hard-won gap in seconds. _They’re going to get me._ Derek feels part of himself go cold and accept this, feels another part of him flare hot and reject it. Behind him, the Juggernaut roars into a bone-cracking, calcium splitting shift, vocal chords thickening, the sound deepening. Derek spins, sees something the size and shape of a grizzly bear barrel out of the underbrush and lunge.

The alpha’s paws hit him in the chest, smash him into a tree and both his clavicles snap, his ribs splintering, the whole of his chest cracking inward. He screams once before the scream becomes blood, before he’s on the ground, gagging. He feels one lung collapse and the other flap in his chest. His attacker doesn’t stop. He starts clawing Derek open – his forearms, face, shredding the leather jacket. He goes into shock immediately. He’s aware in flashes: someone laughing, his own hand clawing the dirt, his nose full of blood, his mouth full of blood, a Nike sneaker near his head, a hand fisting his hair and _pulling_. He tries to say something, anything, hear his own voice before they –  

 

* * *

 

“You can’t just leave.”

Derek slams his trunk closed and ignores the protest. He ignores it all the way up until the moment Scott McCall, seventeen-years-old, and visibly upset, hip-checks his driver-side door shut in his efforts to get Derek’s attention. He also manages to kind of smash Derek’s hand between his hip and the door handle, which, you know, just great.

“Dammit, McCall!”

“Sorry! _Sorry_!”

Derek’s not actually hurt, but he makes a show of shaking his hand a little before pointing. “Get off my car.”

Scott’s got his hands up, palms out. “C’mon. _Please_. We need to talk about this.”

“There is nothing to talk about.”

“What?! There’s _a lot_ to talk about! I’m _stuck_ like this now. You can’t just ditch me.”

“First of all: there was zero guarantee that you killing my uncle would have actually reversed the bite. Secondly: There’s no Alpha out there that can call you out now. So you’re fine. Just don’t bite anyone and go back to playing lacrosse and prom or whatever you do.” He squints at McCall. “How old are you again?”

“Stop being a dick. You can’t leave me alone now.” Scott smells anxious, a low-grade alkali scent under the usual Molotov of sweaty gym clothes and deodorant. Teenage boys stink. Literally and figuratively. Scott’s giving him this _look_. “You’re the only other werewolf in Beacon Hills, Derek.”

“We’re not pack, McCall. I killed your Alpha, technically, but that doesn’t make us pack unless I want you in my pack and I really, really _don’t_. So you’re free. The Argents won’t mess with you if you just stick to being human, okay? All the assholes are dead and Allison will protect you. You’re better off sticking to her than me.”

He goes for the door again, but McCall blocks. “Derek! No. You owe me.”

It’s Derek’s turn to give Scott a _look_. He grabs a fistful of Scott’s jacket collar, lifts, and sets the kid down again away from his Camero. Scott, for his part, lets him do this with a kind of dumb, impressed look on his face. He does that too often – look impressed with Derek when he’s not doing anything impressive. Derek straightens his jacket in a business-like way.

“No, I don’t. My uncle was a fucking monster who bit you and killed my sister. He’s dead now and I’m getting out of this goddamn town before your girlfriend’s psycho family decides I’m not nice enough for them. Okay?” This time McCall doesn’t make a move to stop him. He just stands there looking resigned and kinda pitiful in his rumpled jacket and his over-grown bangs. He needs a haircut three weeks ago. “Jesus… _Look_. It’s not just the Argents –”

“They wouldn’t hurt you,” Scott pipes up, all optimism infused enthusiasm. “I can vouch for you. Allison can too. She’s on your side. Her dad says he won’t come after you.”

“Allison left me chained in a basement.”

“She was confused.”

“Then she shot me with an arrow! Two arrows! Then her aunt shot me in the fucking chest.”

“She didn’t know what was going on. That was my fault for not telling her.”

“She’s a hunter, Scott.”

“No, she’s not! She feels terrible about what… what Kate did…” Scott looks uncomfortable. “That’s why she’s on your side.”

“Oh, she feels guilty _now_. Great.” Derek pokes Scott in the chest with two fingers, leans in. “I’m leaving. Get over it.” He waits to make sure Scott isn’t going to protest, then turns around, popping the car door. He glances over his shoulder, feels Scott desperately failing to come up with a compelling argument or leverage to keep him here. “It’s dangerous for me to stick around here as a lone alpha. Trust me. You don’t want me to stay.”

“Why? What will happen?”

“I’ll get omegas out here looking for me. Or I’ll get turf-warred by some bitten pack. Or worse.” Derek’s letting himself be drawn into explanations. He’s not sure why. “My family was the last established born-pack in the area. If I stick around, someone might get ideas, even with the Argents openly hunting in Beacon Hills. You don’t want that. I don’t want that. It’s why my sister and I left in the first place: she didn’t want to scrap it out with the fucking riff-raff.”

“You keep saying ‘born’ versus ‘bitten’. Why?”

He should just get in the car and go. “It’s nothing. Just…” Derek sighs and turns around. “Bitten packs tend to be full of assholes.”

Scott tilts his head. “Why would a bitten pack be meaner than a born pack?”

“Born packs are family, Scott. Like a mom and dad and mostly their kids and stuff. Bitten packs mean someone is trying to turn humans into werewolves and, statistically, that doesn’t work out as often as you think. You get people like you: wolves who don’t want to be wolves trying to be human instead. Imagine if Peter hadn’t died and kept blackmailing you into joining him, threatened your family, called you out against your will. Now imagine a whole pack of people like that. Infighting and pack on pack killing gets… regular.”

“Alphas do that? Just…” He shakes his head. “… _bite_ people into their pack and force them to join?”

“Assholes do, yes. It’s a shitty way to do it though. I told you: the bite is a gift.” He shrugs. “But only to someone who wants it.”

Scott’s brow scrunches. “That’s not what you said to me the first time.”

“You looked scared shitless. I thought maybe if I made it seem cool…”

“What?!”

“Hey, I could have just let you run around in the woods crying.”

“I was not _crying_!”

“You were kind of crying.”

Scott makes a face. “Shut up. That’s what I’m talking about though. I don’t know that stuff. I need someone to teach me and you’re the only one!”

“I’m not staying here,” Derek repeats. “The Argents are still here. I don’t care what they _say_ they’re going to do; if their word meant anything, they wouldn’t have killed my family in the first place.”

“They _won’t_ go after you, though. Chris said that Kate went against the code and he’s serious about that, so you’re safe, okay? We aren’t on their list. We didn’t hurt anyone… uh… or I guess _I_ didn’t hurt anyone. And you… didn’t hurt anyone…” Scott trails off, squinting at him. “…in town?” Derek gives him nothing. “Recently…?” When Derek continues not to give him anything, he changes tack. “Look, you said it that night in the woods. You said we were brothers. Was that bullshit? Did you just say that because you thought I was freaking out? Or did that actually mean something?”

Derek arches a brow.

“You’re guilt tripping me into staying?” He gestures vaguely. “In a town with the people who’ve hunted my kind since I was a child? Really?” Scott’s trying to keep a hard face, but he’s kind of lousy at pretending his doesn’t care about someone’s feelings, even if that someone is Derek Hale, the guy trying to ditch him in a town full of hunters. Derek sighs, loudly. “Scott, I’m sorry that Peter bit you. If I’d known… I would have killed him a lot sooner for you, but I – _what_ are you doing?”

Scott, who was clearly going for an awkward shoulder pat, pretends he was just rubbing his neck. “What? Nothing.” He coughs. “Huh?”

Derek, realizing that Scott thinks he’s sad about Peter being dead, says, “Yeah. I’m going.”

“Derek, _please_.” Scott is literally giving him sad puppy-dog eyes, all desperate and sixteen and pathetic. “Can’t you just stick around for a little while longer?

His brain says _, No. Fuck you. You’re not my problem._ But what he says out loud, through his teeth is, “ _Fine_.” Goddammit. “I’m selling the house. The land is still worth something. You have as long as it takes me to get an offer that’s not shit. So whatever you want to ask me in person, get it done now. Deal?”

“Yes! Awesome.” Scott beams, bouncing slightly on the balls of his feet, grinning and gripping the strap on his backpack with renewed energy. “Okay. Uh, do you wanna meet up after school then? Because I really need to talk to you about full moon stuff, okay? Like, best tactics and stuff. I know what you said about anchors and things, but I still get nervous, you know?”

“Sure. But after six. I’ll need to talk to my realtor.”

Scott stares at him.

Derek stares back. “What?”

“You have a realtor?”

Derek squints. “Yes, I have a… Why is that what you’re focused on?”

“I don’t know. That’s just… so… normal.”

Derek breaths out through his nose, hard, like bull.

“It’s like you’re an adult or something.”

“Get out of here and do your homework!” He fights down the sudden lurch that follows when he realizes those are Laura’s words coming from his mouth. When Scott just stares, wide-eyed, he snarls, “Did I _fucking_ stutter?”

McCall scampers.

Derek waits until he’s gone before turning around and climbing into his car. He breathes in and breathes out. He’s been told this car smells musky, like it needs to be detailed and the interior redone. Laura told him that years ago, meaningfully, gentling her tone in the way that reminded him of their mother coaxing a wounded animal from under the porch. Derek’s hands tighten on the wheel, the old leather stitching under his fingers. He closes his eyes. He breathes in – _Laura, mom, dad, Cora, summer, cologne, hand-cream, laughter_ – and he breathes out, hands relaxing on the wheel.

“It’s fine,” he says to his reflection in the rear-view mirror. “It’s fine. I’ll just help him for a little bit. Then I’m gone. I’m –”

 

* * *

 

He wakes up on the floor of the basement in his house.

It’s a slow thing. Sounds first: voices, laughter, someone snapping the cap off a beer. Smell: individual musks, skin, hair, pizza, alcohol, his own blood. When he opens his eyes, they’re gummed with fluid, his face hot with migraine pressure and sticky with old sweat. He’s lying on his side, uncomfortably aware of each of his ribs, but the bones have snapped back into place, aligned right, the blood and punctured lung undone and healed over. He lifts his head.

Four alphas are in the room with him. They’re lounging, laughing and chatting amongst themselves, having pulled chairs and other furniture from other parts of the house. They’re drinking his beer, but someone clearly ordered a pizza while he was unconscious and something about that – the casual serial killer confidence of having a delivery to the house – puts a pit in Derek’s belly. He rolls onto his stomach, slowly, getting his hands back under him.

“Oh, awake now?” The woman again. When she speaks, the others settle a little, pay attention. She’s beautiful, brown skinned, Indian maybe. Her hair’s knotted up in an inky twist and her smile has fangs. “You gave us a bit of a run, didn’t you?”

Derek lunges instantly forward, grabs a burnt cinder block from the floor and whips it directly into the big wolf’s face. It explodes, concrete and blood and an agonized _roar_. Derek almost makes it past his blind flailing to the door, but it’s closed. His hand closes on the handle just as the twins (and they are twins) seize him from behind. With a single swing, they launch him into the far wall with enough force to crack the ancient mortar. His arm breaks and knits at the elbow, regenerative heat flooding his arm. Derek hits the ground on his knees, curled over, and lets the pain swarm him for a useless pointless moment, his forehead pressed against the wall. It still stinks like ash in here. Like a crematorium. He thinks, blindly, _I should have let them foreclose on this fucker._

“You okay, Ennis?” One of the twins is laughing, the one in the blue sneakers. “He got you right in the face.”

“SHUT UP, ETHAN.” The big guy’s wiping blood away, a dark river of red pulsing freely from his split brow. There’s exposed bone beneath the blood, knitting closed as Derek watches. Ennis starts forward, his dinner-plate mitts flexing, wet with red, roped with intent. “I’m gonna break his fucking jaw –”

The woman stops him with a hand to the chest. He looks _offended_.

“No,” she says.

“But Kali –”

“Not yet. That’s your own fault, you know.” When Ennis just snarls, she smiles. “Calm. You can’t blame him. You crushed his rib cage. Call it even.” She never stops looking at Derek, so he knows it’s him she speaks to when she says, “If you try something like that again, I will let him break your jaw. As many times as it takes. Understood?”

Derek glares, feels the red heat behind his retinas. He’s unsurprised when four pairs of red eyes gleam back. The woman, Kali, steps forward, her beer swinging from her fingertips. He claws are out. They scratch the glass as she crouches in front of him.

“I’m being gentle, Derek. Let’s be civil for a minute.”

“I’m not joining you.”

“You don’t have an option.”

“I don’t have a fucking pack to kill for you.”

“We think you do, if you just _think_ , honey.”

“I don’t have a pack. I didn’t bite anyone.”

That gets a laugh out of the twins, who go back to drinking. They’re definitely Scott and Stiles’ age. Derek can’t think about what that means. Kali smiles.

“You don’t have to _bite_ someone to make them pack, Derek. You know that.”

“I didn’t make anyone pack.”

She ignores him. “You know, there are other ways we could bring you in with us. If you won’t take in strays or make new wolves yourself. Do you want to know the third option?” When Derek doesn’t answer and remains crouched against the wall, staring, she puts her beer down on the floor and leans forward. “An alpha is only an alpha within the context of having a pack. If we make a bitch out of you, then you’ll still be with us. Won’t you?”

Dread roots in his nerves, lights them up so his whole body hums. “That’s archaic alpha-hype bullshit and you know it.”

“You sound sentimental. If you had a pack it would be a little family wouldn’t it?”

“My pack _was_ my family.”

“Right. The famous Hale pack. Born and bred, so you’re traditional, aren’t you? No biting unless asked. Two-alpha family group. Pack first and all that.” Her smiles gets pointed, gets too big for her jaws. “Right up until you bit your uncle’s throat out, I guess. Which is why we’re here.”

“I only killed my uncle because he needed to be put down.” He swallows, bares his teeth. He says, louder, “He killed my sister. My real alpha. He betrayed _us_ first. I’m not playing into your bitten pack dynamic crap.”

“He smashed his phone,” says the first twin, Ethan.

“He’s protecting someone,” says the other twin, slightly eager.

“Yeah. My realtor. I would prefer it if you didn’t try to murder her because her phone number is in my call history. Or the Chinese food delivery guy.” Derek maintains the sneer, but there in the back of his mind a continuous movie runs – a reel of snapshots into the immediate future, _his_ future, ugly and agonizing and relentless. Like Kate all over again, except worse and – No! Focus. “You assholes didn’t think this through very well, did you?”

 “We don’t need your phone to find your pack. We want you to give them to us.” When, he says nothing, she lowers her voice, speaks through her teeth. “I thought you were a survivor, Derek. Out of your whole slaughtered pack, you walked away. You’re the one we want. You’re lucky. You’re strong. You’re like us.” When, again, he says nothing, she says, “Figured you’d want it the hard way. Hales are stubborn like that.”

 “Kali.” It’s one of the twins, the one in blue sneakers. He sounds… not nervous exactly, just uncomfortable. “Can we…?”

“Go keep watch, Aiden. Both of you. If anyone comes looking for him, bring them here.” The twins scamper as Kali picks up her beer and stands up. For a moment, she just looks down at him and Derek has to control his breathing, fight to pace the shaking rhythm that threatens to be hyperventilation. “Break his jaw, Ennis. Then crack his skull.”

Ennis moves too fast this time. That last thing he feels is the other wolf’s hand, palm flat against the side of his head and the short, fast momentum before his skull hits the wall and –

 

* * *

 

Allison Argent is standing on his porch. She’s wearing sweats and a track hoodie. No make-up. She looks tired. Stress in the scent of her. She hasn’t been sleeping or eating right – the acid of malnourishment, black coffee, and hunger on her breath. Her clothes smell like Scott. Recent contact and Derek thinks Allison’s going to be heart-breaker when she grows up a bit: wind-chafed and pretty, freckled, dark ringlets in her hair even when its knotted up like it is right now. Derek shuts the door behind him and leans back against it, expression closed.

“You shouldn’t have come here alone.”

“Do you want to kill me?” She asks that too quickly, almost curious. Her pulse rabbits fast in the thin structure of her ribcage. “Sorry. That’s freaky. I mean; I don’t blame you but it might be a bad idea.” Derek can tell she has something she means to say to him, but she’s not finding it. She laughs, pushing fly-aways off her forehead, licks her lips. She needs chap-stick. She needs sleep. There’s a knife in a holster on her thigh, thick as her forearm. “I’m here to tell you that my dad isn’t going to come after you, okay? I made him swear. We won’t come after you.”

Derek eyes her, the knife, the tiny flickers in her dark brown irises. “Why isn’t your father here?”

“He… he doesn’t know I’m here. He’s going to call you, but I thought someone should tell you in _person_.” She swallows. Her heart’s humming. She’s scared of him. She thinks he’s going to do something; it’s in her skin, in the small musculature around her eyes. Her lower lips trembles almost invisibly when she inhales. “Someone needed to look you in the eyes and fucking swear to you that we’re going to keep the code. Okay? It was never supposed to be… like this.”

Her voice bends, almost breaks, on the last two words.

Derek studies her a second. “Allison, are you _on_ something?”

“Ritalin and espresso shots.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“Scott says you’re thinking about leaving town. You don’t have to.”

“Allison. Stop talking.”

“Scott is a good person. I want to help him and I want to help you.”

“Okay, Allison, stop talking and listen to me, I’m only going to say this once.” He leans forward and enunciates. “ _You are sixteen years old._ You were ten when my family died. Your aunt was a liar and killer who did exactly what her family bred her to do: kill families like mine.” He thinks about pushing her off his front stoop, but decides against it. “Your dad… I guess he thinks the code makes it moral, but I’ve hid in basements waiting to die with men like him walking overhead. There wasn’t a code then. I appreciate you trying to do the right thing, but you’re a child. Just go home.”

She purses her lips, nods. He can hear her swallow. She says, “Okay. Sorry I bothered you.” She steps back off the porch. “Sorry.”

Derek watches her go for a moment, listens to her go – the manic beat of her heart in her veins.

“I was sixteen too,” Derek calls out, annoyed with himself. Allison turns, stares blankly. Derek doesn’t move, doesn’t give her anything. He examines the rotten rafters overhead while he speaks. “That’s when Kate convinced me she was safe. She told me that every day for over a year that she loved me and she would never, ever hurt me. That she was my friend.” He stops looking at the rafters and looks at Allison. “Then, the next year, she set my house on fire and killed my entire family.” Allison quickly wipes her eyes, her breathing coming fast. Derek shakes his head. “My point is… if she tricked you, it’s not because you missed something. It’s because she was good at lying, kid.”

Allison, again, tries to say something. It doesn’t quite get out though. What she manages to say is, “I want to help.” She tries a smirk, but it comes out strained. “How about an Argent protects a Hale for once, huh?”

“Again: You’re a teenaged girl.”

“I’m a teenaged girl with cross bow and guns.” She tosses her arms up as she backs away from the house, throws them open and she shouts. “I’m a teenaged girl in a hunter family and I think it’s fucked up! It’s fucked up that my dad thinks Scott needs to be watched when it’s _my family_ that’s killed people. It’s _fucked up_ that I loved Kate so much when she was a fucking monster. It’s so fucked up and the only people who get it are Scott, Stiles and _you_ and I don’t even know you, but _you_ knew what my family was before I ever did.”

Derek would give anything to be anywhere else than here, having this conversation with a crying higher schooler. It’s been a while since he was that high strung about anything, since emotions ran so raw in him that it affected him physically the way it’s affecting Allison. She’s hot with it, shaking with it, sweat and saline and psychological exhaustion. Derek remains on his burnt out porch, hands in his pockets, considering her small break down and wondering if she did this in front of anyone else.

“You want to make something right?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. Then protect Scott. When I’m gone, he’ll need you. Can you do that?”

“I love Scott.” Derek resists an eye-roll, but barely. “Of course I’ll look out for him. But whose looking out for you?” She gestures to the trees, to the over-grown lawn, the rotten house front. “You’re… living here. Alone. My dad says lone alphas get targeted by other packs. Is that true?”

“Only if I start building a pack out here and I’m not. I’m keeping my head down.”

“But what if someone does come?”

Derek smiles at her. Maybe the smile has a bit of fang in it, maybe his eyes bank some heat. Allison’s eyes widen just slightly and Derek lies through his teeth.

“I’m not worried, kid. Now get in your car and go home.”

 

_tbc_


	2. Chapter 2

“Hey.”

Derek doesn’t look up from what he’s doing, giving the gas pump the entirety of his attention. Isaac Lahey, hands in his pockets, hood up in the rain, is standing in the parking lot behind him. Derek can smell anxiety, sweat, aftershave. Lahey’s soaked through, a gaunt, pale kid staring blue-eyed and desperate through the downpour. There’s a particular scent that is identifiable to Lahey alone, though, it’s not something Derek can describe exactly. He didn’t pick it up in the rain, which is how the kid managed to get close this time. Derek pretends to look up only after the pump clicks off.

“Go away, Isaac.”

“No. I have questions.”

Derek screws the gas cap shut and moves to pop the driver side door. “Nope.”

“Wait! Please.” He starts to move toward the Camero but stops hard when Derek _looks_ at him. He flinches, physically, a sharp fear response so intense the air spikes with adrenaline. Derek switches off the death glare. Not because he didn’t fully intend to terrify the twitchy teenager, but because, now, he can smell blood. Not much, but it’s there. Faintly. Lahey looks like he’s going to throw up or cry. “I just want to talk.”

Derek waits… then closes the door to his car. “You added a broken nose to the black eye.”

“I… yeah.” Isaac wipes his face with his soaking sleeve. “Yeah, I did.”

Derek tucks his hands in his jacket pockets. Circles the car. “The same person?”

Isaac nods.

“You want me to go teach that person a lesson or something?” Derek keeps circling, slowly nearer. “Because I’m not exactly opposed to that.”

“What? No! No, I don’t want –” Isaac stops. Like maybe he just realized he _doesn’t_ believe his own protest. Like maybe he’d love it if Derek enacted some violence on his behalf. Then that moment of instinct is gone and he says, “No,” more firmly. “I don’t want you to hurt him. I just...” He looks around, nervous. “Should we talk somewhere else?”

“Why?” Derek looks pointedly around the empty gas station parking lot, the rain roaring down around them. “Is someone going to overhear you asking me werewolf questions and take it seriously?”

Isaac blinks. “Uh, no. I guess not.” Isaac wipes his face again. There’s blood on his sleeve now. “Um, in the graveyard, you told me you’d kill me if I told anyone about you.”

“Yeah. I definitely said that, which makes me wonder what kind of crazy you are to approach me a second time.” Derek continues to close the distance between them, not in a nice way either, not in a non-threatening way. So it says something when Isaac holds his ground. His sneakers planted in a puddle. Derek cocks his head. “So what’s worse than a werewolf to you?

He’s standing directly in front of Isaac now, close enough Derek could head butt him. Or rip his face off with his teeth. The implication is there. When the kid doesn’t run, Derek reaches up, fingers stopping at the edge of Isaac’s hood. He can hear the kid’s teeth chattering, but he doesn’t move so Derek gingerly tugs the hood up, then pushes it off Isaac’s head all together. He manages to keep his instinctive first response off his face. There’s a gash in Isaac’s head, two inches long and stitched with what looks like dental floss. He glances down to meet Isaac’s eyes a moment, then inspects the stitching again.

“You sew that yourself?”

“Yeah.’

“Kay. It looks alright… considering. I assume there’s a reason you didn’t go to the hospital?”

“Yeah.”

“Uh-huh. You need somewhere to hide out?”

“Do… you have a place?”

“No, actually. And you shouldn’t be asking random men to come back to their place.”

“You helped me before.” When Derek frowns, he adds, “I mean you’re not random. I know you.”

Derek surveys Isaac’s face. “Lots of bad people are nice at first. It’s how they draw you in. I was nice to you once because a rogue omega almost crushed you with a track hoe. I got you out of a hole. Then I threatened to kill you. I have no idea why you’d decide I’m a nice person.”

Isaac blinks. “I _don’t_ think you’re a nice person. I just want you to make me like you.”

Derek’s head jerks back before he can stop himself.

Isaac continues hurriedly. “You don’t have to help me. I don’t need any other help, but if you could just bite me… Right? That’s how it works?”

 “Do you ask strange men in gas stations to bite you a lot?”

“I’m being serious.”

“So am I. I’m not doing that.”

“Why not?”

“Because that’s not how it works.”

“Please. He’ll kill me. Know he will –”

Derek snarls. It’s in an exasperated way, but a human probably can’t tell the difference between an exasperated snarl and a murderous face-biting snarl. Isaac shuts up, freezing like an animal on the road.  

Eventually, Derek points to his car and says, “Get in.” Isaac looks at him like he’s grown fangs again. Derek lets the red glow through in his irises. “Get. _In_.”

Isaac hesitates… then slowly moves toward the car. Derek’s sense of smell isn’t so fine he can decide what chiefly motivates the kid to do that, to get in a car with a literal predator. Maybe the fear of a different kind of predator, one that wounds in ways a werewolf couldn’t think of. Which is dumb. Because werewolves are mostly human at the end of the day. Only a lucky few truly become wolves.

Derek gets in the car.

One MacDonald’s run and a shopping spree later, Isaac is dozing in the back seat, snoring slightly, skinny body swallowed entirely by a brand new pair of sweat pants and hoodie. In retrospect, Derek could have picked something more teenager sized, but he’d been in a rush. It wasn’t that Derek thought the Argents would literally murder him in a Dicks Sporting Goods, but the Argents were also the kind of people who picked fights in gas station parking lots, so better safe than sorry. His trip into the store had been less than five minutes in duration and his brief inability to comprehend what in-store credit was just went to show how feral he’d gotten in the last six months.

Now, pulled over on the side of the road with the engine running and the heat on, Derek isn’t sure what to do. The rain keeps coming down. The car is now uncomfortably warm, but Lahey only just stopped shivering so Derek just sits there, heat on, looking up local motel prices and feeling idiotic. Lahey breathes slow under the rumble of the car engine. Anxiety sits in his chest the way a bullet might. He listens to Isaac shift his weight, his breathing come out of REM.

 “So…” says Isaac after a reasonable span of time. “How did you become a werewolf?”

Derek looks up from his phone and glares into the rearview mirror. Isaac’s lying down, so he can’t see his face though. 

“I was born one.”

Derek continues to eye the empty mirror, listening to the rapid rhythm of his heartbeat in the backseat.

“So, if that dude in the graveyard had bitten me, would I have turned into a werewolf?”

“No. Only some werewolves can turn others.”

“Oh.”

Derek keeps scrolling, tapping on a link for discount rooms.

“Are you one of the type that can?”

Derek glances up at the mirror again. “So what if I am?”

Isaac’s heart stutters in his chest, a low anxious acidity rising in his scent. “Well… have you… ever bitten someone?”

Derek studies the empty rearview mirror face a long moment. “No.”

There’s another pause. “ _Would_ you ever bite someone?”

“Sure. If I found someone I liked enough to be around my whole life.” He lets that settle for a moment. “The problem is most people who think they want to be wolves don’t _really_ want it, they just want to be… safe usually.” Derek continues to scroll, but he’s not seeing the screen anymore, he’s watching the empty rearview mirror again. “Isaac, who broke your nose?”

Silence from the back seat. Then, “My dad just… gets mad sometimes.”

“I get mad all the time. I wouldn’t smash something over my kid’s head just because I’m mad.” Derek has to consciously keep some of the wolf from his tone. He can feel it just below the surface, like an itch. When Isaac doesn’t say anything, Derek says, “Do you want me to kill him for you?”

“ _What_?” Isaac jerks upright in his seat, face coming into view finally. “No! Why would you keep asking that?”

“Because you said he was gonna kill you.” He lets that hang, watching Isaac’s eyes in the mirror. Derek’s own eyes are red in the reflection, alpha-glow, staring through the teenager in the backseat. He waits, listens to Isaac’s pulse rabbiting. “So, what do you want?”

“Why can’t you make me a werewolf? Let me deal with it?”

“Because lycanthropy is a pretty permanent solution for what I view as a temporary problem.”

There’s another long silence. Derek lets the heat go from his eyes.

 “Isaac,” he says, “you don’t want to be a werewolf. You just want your dad to stop hitting you.”

“Yeah…” Isaac laughs, but it’s not a laugh. “But I really, _really_ want him to stop hitting me.”

Derek turns in his seat.

“Does your dad check your phone a lot?” When Isaac nods, Derek says, “Okay. I’ll write down my phone number. Memorize it. Don’t text me. Call me. Then delete your call history with me. You know how to do that?” Isaac nods. “I’m telling you to tell the police because they’re professionals. Sheriff Stilinski would look out for you. He’s… decent. But if you won’t do that, then call me if something happens or you’re worried something will happen.”

“Okay.”

Derek sits forward again, puts the car into gear. “Buckle up, there’s a bed and breakfast down the road. I’m leaving you there with the grandma that runs the joint.” He checks the rearview and this time, he catches Isaac looking at the phone screen, his features illuminated and blank. “Hey. Kid.” He looks up. “Like I told you: I’m not averse to violence. If you want that, let me know.”

Isaac studies him in the mirror. “You won’t bite me, but you’ll kill someone for me?”

Derek shrugs.

“Heh. You’re kinda messed up. You know that, Ha –”

 

* * *

 

Derek wakes up on his stomach with a rag in his mouth. It’s soaking, stuffed between his teeth and tied there. His skull swarms hot – the tight, pulsing throb of blood and regenerative fire trying to knit his fractured skull back together. Derek groans, once, tries to swallow. Then he retches immediately, a fit of gagging seizing him until his whole body jerks uncontrollably forward. His jaws close hard on the rag and it runs with water and – as he now realizes – diluted monkshood. He coughs, thrashes, his eyes burning, throat searing. His lips are cracked. His tongue feels swollen.

He stops thrashing through pure will alone. Forces his jaw to relax, stop biting and wringing the poison into his mouth.

Gradually, the dizziness goes.

It takes him another moment to register why his thrashing seems ineffective. He stares drunkenly at this right forearm. It takes a while for his vision to focus. When it does, a thick iron manacle clarifies, snapped tight around his wrist, an industrial strength chain snaked around the iron headboard. He yanks at it, finds no give. Yanks his other wrist, feels something pull tight around his ankles and he jerks, hard, looking over his shoulder. He can’t see, but he can feel the ankle cuffs now, just barely see the chain hooked into the prison shackles, lashing his feet to the end of the bed. His shoes are gone. When he tries to draw his feet in, there’s no slack at all. He can’t get his knees underneath him.  

The room is empty. He’s lying flat face down on the rotten mattress in the master bedroom, the frame having decayed down to a rusted metal skeleton, smelling like mold and smoke and… it’s his parents’ bed.

Derek moans before he can think not to, a gagged, muffled noise that he _hates_ the second he hears it in his own throat. He growls instead. He thrashes, yanking at the chains until the whole bed frame jars and slams against the wall. He bucks and pulls until his wrists run with blood, until he’s breathing like he’s run a marathon, until his eyes blur and burn with the fume of wolfsbane, high on whatever cocktail Kali put in the gag. He coughs. Sneezes three times. Coughs again.

“No.”

It’s muffled through the gag. He tugs again, but half-heartedly at the chain, twisting his wrist in the metal as though the result will be different, the metal will warp and buckle _this_ time. It doesn’t and he squeezes his eyes shut, feels his own sweat cooling on his back beneath his T-shirt, on his brow and upper lip. He shakes with the effort of how hard he’s trying not to shiver.

“Okay. Okay. It’s okay.”

Someone is coming up the stairs.

“C’mon.” He pulls again at the chains, hearing the desperation in his own voice, the childish crack. “ _C’mon_.”

The door opens. He forces himself not to look.

“Hello, Derek.”

He knows the voice. He closes his eyes and fights down the scream.

“It’s been a long time.” His footfalls are silent against the wood paneled floor, even rotted and burnt out as it is. “You were about ten years old when I last came to Beacon Hills. Do you remember?”

Does he remember?

Yes and no.

He remembers a bright afternoon in the summer after his tenth birthday – his mother standing in a skirt and tank-top, holding Cora in her arms, facing a man at the edge of the forest. He remembers the man because of how he spoke, with the Alpha Voice to another alpha. How strange that was. How it set his teeth on edge. He didn’t understand until later the gravity when the man said, “ _which one of the three would you devour to spare the other two? Or are you afraid that, having consumed the first of the litter, you would turn your jaws on the remainder?”_

Later, Laura would tell him this man’s name to keep him from harm’s way.

“I think,” says the monster named Deucalion, “that you _do_ remember.”

Derek ignores him in favor of ripping at the chains again, thrashing and pulling. He can’t shift. His eyes burn hot, glow internally, his fangs aching in his skull, but not lengthening. His head spins. He tastes bile and falls flat again, panting. He feels a hand on his head. For a moment, part of his delirious mind tells him to lie still and just pretend to pass out, just let himself go unconscious, bite down and swallow enough wolfsbane to start seizing.

But that seems like submission, so he starts snarling instead. Shouting through the gag. Animal roaring that never quite breaks out from the human spectrum of sounds. He resists the primal urge to howl, _actually_ howl, at a pitch that he knows Scott would hear even from his suburban home. Because in his fantasy, the kid calls the Argents, calls the police, does anything other than run out here alone like a moron.

But he knows, he fucking _knows_ , they want him to call for help.

The hand in his hair closes and yanks his head up. With his second hand the blind man runs his fingertips over Derek’s face, tracing out the details, brows, cheekbones, nose, mouth. After a moment, he lets go.

“Hmm.” Derek can hear the smile in Deucalion’s voice. “You look like Talia.”

Derek snarls. The man moves his hand to the nape of Derek’s neck, grips it, pushes him flat into the mattress. Derek clenches his eyes shut until he sees light behind his eyelids.

“You killed your alpha, Derek. So you know how it feels.” Derek doesn’t move, doesn’t respond. Feels the hand on his neck tighten.  “Now. Did it feel good killing your uncle? Was it liberating?”

No. It was _intoxicating_. His entire body lit up and moving inside, like being fucked senseless, like being high and lucid all at once. Nothing in his entire life felt better than killing Peter and pulling the fucking life force from his goddamn corpse. Going alpha felt like being god… right up until it didn’t. Derek breathes deeply and shakes his head ‘no’.

“No point lying to me. I can smell it on you. Killing pack is a transcendent experience and I’m glad you got to know it, Derek.” He can feel the smile in the man’s voice. “It doesn’t happen often in packs like yours. The Hale family was close. I respected your parents. It’s why I agreed to stay away from Beacon Hills. But then the Argents proved why packs like theirs can’t _survive_.”

Derek yanks at the chains again, metal cutting deeply, blood running fresh down his arms.

Deucalion leans down. He says, “Wolves that pretend at humanity are doomed to burn.”

Then he covers Derek’s nose and mouth and seals his airways shut entirely.

Derek whips his head, spine arced back as far as his bonds will allow. His fingers are sticky with his own blood. Not slick enough to slip the shackles. Deucalion’s hand smells like bar soap and his own styling gel. An acrid underlying scent that makes the hair stand up along his arms and neck. Derek tries to bite, but the gag holds his jaws open. His head starts to pound, his lungs constricting, face heating up. The other alpha watches calmly as he suffocates.

A werewolf can go a long time without air, an alpha can go even longer, but two minutes in, even the wolf’s begun to smother. He’s thrashing, held still by the hands _(like stone, fixed points in space and time and he doesn’t want to smother, he doesn’t want to die like that)_ over his face. He’s starting to lose consciousness. Derek can’t even scream through Deucalion’s hand. His lungs are flayed tissue doused in battery acid, burning in his chest, his whole universe collapsed into the fact he cannot _breathe_. He needs to breathe.

“Maybe I’ll just end the Hale line here,” Deucalion murmurs. “Maybe we’ll just –”

 

* * *

 

Derek’s never been hit by a car before. In retrospect, that shouldn’t be a surprise. Most people go their entire lives without being hit by a car. Or shot. Or stabbed. Or electrocuted. Or partially gutted. Or locked in basements and… Anyway, he’s never been hit by a car before and as a beta that would have been a problem for him. As an alpha who sees it coming from 200 meters off at 45MPH in the rain – _a Chevy Lumina, black, probably a last run 2001 model, roaring, engine open, the gas utterly floored_ – Derek sees red.

Then he gets hit by a car.

Laura, in his brain, says, _Good job, dummy._

He wakes up folded over the hood with the rain coming down on him. Someone is crying hysterically. The same person’s got their hands on his shoulders, shaking him gently, then not gently, feeling at his neck with bony fingers. Through the drunken heat of pain and shock, he thinks they’re feeling for his pulse. Derek’s world swings blurry and muffled around the axis of his brain, slow motion, making light-trails of the street lines at the end of the alley, blurs out of the moonlight. Not a full moon, but close. Derek gets his palms flat to the hood and pushes himself up.

“Derek!?”

Isaac. Isaac Lahey. From the graveyard. Hi, Isaac.

“Wha’appen?” Derek slurs.

“Jesus fucking Christ. Don’t move! Are you okay? You’re… you’re… kind wolfy?”

Derek thinks that’s rude for a second, then realizes his whole lower body is hot. His pelvis, a dull splintered locus of pain, is wedged in the buckled front fender of the Chevy Lumina. The hood crumpled like tin around his hips. As he comes back to himself, Derek feels the engine heat blistering his stomach as fast as his alpha-hyped system can heal him. His blood crackles with regeneration and shift. He keeps slurring because his mouth is the wrong shape – partial muzzle and fangs and reconstructive shift. He yawns his jaw open – a massive lupine baring of needle fangs and tongue – relocates it, then snaps his teeth until the structures in his mouth are human again.

“What happened?” he says again, still hazy from healing. “Isaac?”

“He hit you!”

“Who… who hit?”

“My dad. No!” He darts forward, hands gripping Derek’s shoulders, trying without force to keep him still. “Don’t move. Your spine might be broken. Oh god. What the fuck?”

“M’okay,” Derek says, shrugging Isaac’s hands off.

“How can you be fine?!”

“Werewolf.”

Derek pushes himself up and back, extracting himself with difficulty from the twisted metal wreckage. His jeans shred, skin too, lines of blood and fire opening along his thighs, the back of his knees. Derek stumbles and Isaac catches him… and promptly falls over because Derek is two times denser than he usually is. Derek hits the pavement on his back, groans and lies there, panting as the last of the shift leaves him and the rain finally runs cold on bare human skin.

“Fuck me…” he says as the pain unfurls, finally, through his entire body. “Fuck fuck _fuck_ …”

“Derek!” Isaac hovers, panicky and pale. “What do you want me to do?”

“Urrrgh. Fucking shoot me?”

“What!?”

“Not really.” Derek paws at his legs, finds something glass or metal lodged in the meat of his right thigh and rips it out. “Oh god. Maybe. Oh fuck. Ow.”

“That’s not funny!”

“I’m okay.” Derek doesn’t sound convinced, even to himself.

“ _Are_ you?!” Isaac really doesn’t sound convinced. In fact, he sounds hysteric. “Your… Derek your legs…”

“They’ll heal,” Derek growls, less confident sounding than he’d like. His right leg, the one that took the brunt when he braced for the hit, seems to be bent the wrong way at the shin. He feels his right tibia snap back into alignment and screams, once, thrashing. “Isaac, I’m… I can’t remember what… happened? Keep talking… okay?”

“Uh, uh, okay. Sure. Sure.” Isaac touches his arm, his shoulder, like he’s not sure he should be touching him at all. He stammers. “My dad tried to… he said things. I got scared. I ran.”

“He threatened to kill you.” Derek’s ribs pop back into place, shredded flesh in his groin, belly, and upper thighs knitting itself back together. Somewhere in his abdominal muscles, a piece of metal is being pushed out of the wound. The rain should hide the tears because _Jesus fucking Christ_ this stings. This was not how he envisioned his first time tapping his alpha healing abilities. Passing out would be heaven, but he can’t so he grits, “Okay. Right. I remember. We gotta go.

“I didn’t think he’d do this.” Isaac’s definitely crying. “ _Shit_. Why didn’t you just jump?”

Derek (who is, again, in the throes of regenerative agony) resents any criticism of his choices in the last few minutes and assumes Derek from two minutes ago, the one without massive internal bleeding and broken bones, knew the answer to that question. He pants, shudders, eyes no doubt neon red in his skull. Derek grips a length of metal poking from just above his hipbone, breathes two times fast, then yanks it out and snarls. Isaac grabs his arm.

“You were… standing behind me.” Derek gasps, spits blood, and coughs. “He would have hit you.” Isaac blinks like that had not occurred to him. “Where’s your dad?” When Isaac just shakes his head, Derek says again, “Isaac, where is he?”

Isaac points about ten meters down the alley to a spot illuminated by the crooked high-beams. Derek recalls, only after he looks and sees, that the windshield on the driver’s side had been smashed from the inside. Like a man intent on vehicular homicide of both his son and a stranger, had forgotten to buckle up and been launched at 45MPH through the glass. Mr. Lahey, in life, had been a large, stocky man, gray-haired and weather worn. A hard case. A bruiser. Now, the crumpled body lies in a puddle of red near a storm drain, folded in half, part of the skull rests against a dumpster by a loading door.

Derek blinks. “Oh.”

“He tried to kill us,” Isaac says again. He sounds a little drunk, toneless, the hallmarks of shock. “I know he… he said he was going to kill me but I thought he didn’t mean it.”

“He did,” Derek grits, the last of his major skeletal structures having righted themselves. ““We need to go.”

Isaac helps Derek to his feet, pulls Derek’s arm over his shoulders. Derek lets him because he’s pretty sure some of his internal organs are in the wrong spot. They limp toward Derek’s car until the feeling comes back into his legs. By the time they reach his Camero, parked half a block down the road, he’s walking on his own power again. His jeans, completely shredded, dark with blood, hang in strips from his legs. His jacket popped a few seams when he, briefly, shifted full wolf to take the hit.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Isaac’s teeth are chattering. He’s in a sweatshirt and old boot-cut denim. His sneakers are soaked. “I didn’t know you could turn into that. That big… wolf-man thing? That’s not Hollywood bullshit?”

Derek fumbles unlocking the car.

“I’m stronger in that form.” He pops the door, collapsing into the driver’s seat while Isaac clambers into the passenger seat and slams the door. It smells immediately like blood and wet dog. Derek grimaces, his eyes glowing, fading, glowing. In time to his heart. His head feels swollen, full of warm static. He feels drunk. Sleepy. His hands are shaking. “I… feel weird.” He swallows. Tries to focus on breathing. “Fuck…”

“Derek?”

“Can… you drive?”

“I have my learners permit. I don’t -- shit!” Isaac pushes Derek upright. He’d been falling over. “Derek?”

“Call… Scott. Scott McCall. Do you know him?”

“The lacrosse captain?”

Derek blinks. “He’s team captain?”

“Yes? Why does that matter?”

“I didn’know that. Cool.”

“Derek! Focus! Derek! Derek, don’t –!”

 

* * *

 

 

“—don’t give up on me now, Derek.”

Deucalion releases his hold.  Derek collapses forward, gasping, coughing. He sucks wolfsbane and water down his throat, gags and retches. While he’s coughing and burning, Deucalion grabs him by the back of his belt, uses two hands, and rips the leather strap like cheap Velcro. Derek’s choking on his own tongue when the older alpha grabs his jeans at the hip and yanks them to his knees and – _No. Oh no._

Derek screams into the gag.

“If you howl properly one of your betas will come. No one will hear you otherwise.”

Deucalion grabs the hem of his shirt, yanking it up from the small of his back and pulling it over Derek’s head, hooking it under his chin. Derek, arms pinned, screams louder. Tries wildly to shift. His mouth instantly blisters. Blood floods his mouth. The change aborts, hard, regeneration shifting to his burning throat and insides. He screams. Blacks out. Comes back writhing, eyes stinging as the skin knits closed again.

“Are you done, Derek?”

Derek pants around the gag. His whole body’s hot. Sweat drips from his jaw. Fear and aborted shift attempts, every muscle surging on a cellular level to no physical release. He thrashes again, just to spite other alpha. Collapses, growling, face pressed into the mattress so he doesn’t have to control his expression when the pain unravels through his upper back and belly. His teeth are too tight in his jaw. His tongue’s bleeding. His gums ache. He can’t breathe without burning.

Deucalion’s removing his jacket, tossing it over the back of a rotten chair.

“I’ll go first, since Kali will leave you incoherent and I want you conscious for this.”

Derek shakes his head, pulling again, hopelessly, at the cuffs on his wrists. His own breathing ragged and afraid in the overwhelming silence. Deucalion rolls his shirt sleeves to the elbow, unbuckles his belt and pulls it off. Derek, watching this, renews his efforts twisting in his restraints and tries to stop himself hyperventilating, stop smelling it – the violence that’s about to come. He thinks of Laura, imagines she’s not dead. She’s coming. She’ll find him. This isn’t happening. This isn’t –

Deucalion climbs onto the mattress and Derek presses his face into the bed and resists the animal instinct to cry for help. The other alpha’s hands settle on his hips, run up his ribs, then back down.

“You smell good,” Deucalion murmurs.

Derek can hear a wet skin on skin sound. The other man calmly lubing up behind him. Did he have it in his pocket? Did he pick it up on the way here? There’s something awful about imagining him in a grocery store somewhere picking up KY Jelly. The same casual sociopathy that the pizza delivery implied. He’s rambling. He’s panicking. Derek smells the shift before he hears it: the muffled calcium groan of bone density changing, ribs expanding, the other alpha’s jaw breaking and knitting in micro-fractures as fangs grow in. He doesn’t shift beyond that.

He straddles Derek’s thighs, pushing the elastic of his boxer-briefs down his hips. Derek bites down bile, fights down the hysteria. Derek tries to shift again, his spine cracking, bowing, lupine ridges popping up the column of his back before, again, the wolfsbane kills the shift. He screams once, feels Deucalion push his underwear all the way down his thighs. Teeth against his shoulder. Claws running down his spine.

 “You ever wonder why most packs are usually led by two alphas?” Deucalion’s tone come across conversational. Casual. “It’s not the stability of having two… well, maybe it is. On some evolutionary level.” Deucalion grabs his ass, one painful handful of his right buttock and Derek goes briefly, physically ballistic – whipping his body against the chains so hard the sound cracks like a gunshot. Blood runs from his wrists and mouth. His bones burn. Deucalion ignores him. He’s hard, his erection pressed into the cleft of Derek’s ass. He’s breathing a little harder, but keeps talking. “It’s just that _fucking_ anyone who’s not an alpha…” Deucalion pushes his hips forward. Ignores the agonized scream. He says, “It just isn’t as good.”

The man braces himself on Derek’s shoulders and –

 

* * *

 

 “– you motherfucker. You brought me a dude who is half roadkill and has _fangs_ , Isaac.”

“I’m sorry! He told me to call Scott McCall, but I don’t know his number!”

“So you brought him _here_?!”

“Your dad’s always out of town!”

Derek becomes aware (distantly, slowly, really reluctantly) of people trying to move him. Awkward teenagers hooking their arms under his armpits and knees. His head aches somewhere deep inside his skull, his muscles sore, like he ran a marathon at full sprint and his bones are buzzing. That’s weird. He doesn’t like that. He groans, sees lights, the interior of a hallway, his own midriff, a Superman emblem on a T-shirt. The person holding his legs has their elbows crooked under the bend of his knees and seems to be struggling with his weight.

They also have long blond hair.

That’s… _bad_.

 His rescuers double time through an open door, grunting as they struggle through a narrow hall, several narrow halls, then drop him on a small twin bed. He can hear them panting for a moment with the effort.

“Holy fuck,” says the girl’s voice he doesn’t recognize. She sounds like she’s talking through water. Derek vaguely feels hands on his stomach, pushing his shirt up. “That was still bleeding a second ago. It’s healing. He’s literally… oh my god. You’re not kidding.”

“Stop that!” Isaac pulls Blonde Girl’s hands off. “Derek? Derek, can you hear me?”

“Un… fortunately…”

“Sorry. I couldn’t get hold of Scott.”

“Typical.”

“Uh, sorry. I’m sorry, but I needed help. I… this is Erica. She’s my friend. I trust her.”

Derek forces his eyes open and finds Isaac hovering and a blond girl in sweats, T-shirt, and glasses staring down at him with a dumb-struck look on her bed-rumpled face. There are dots of acne cream on her forehead and chin. He’s being rescued by spotty children in sweat pants. Great. His stint as a new alpha is going swimmingly. His head is also swimming.

“Shit,” says Erica. “He looks like hell. I’ll get some water and towels. He’s oozing.”

Derek, who does not want to be oozing, tries to sit up and is rewarded with a hot flare of _do-not-fucking-try-that_ pain from his flash-fused ribcage. He pants, lies flat on the bed again and stares at the ceiling. There’s a galaxy painted on that ceiling, hyper-real, studded in glow-in-the-dark horse-head nebulas, glittering quasars of light flung into the far corners of the room. Paper lanterns that look like planets dangle from the ceiling. The bed’s unmade and smells like floral hand-cream and benzoyl peroxide. So it’s Erica’s room. He’s bleeding on her sheets. Good. Awesome. The galaxies overhead keep spinning.

Erica appears suddenly in the room with her smart phone wedged between her jaw and shoulder, towels, a water bottle, and a first aid kit in hand.

She’s saying, “Yes. I think he’s got my notes. Yeah. I know he’s fuckin’ annoying, but I need those notes. Yeah. Cool. Thanks, Boyd. Text me.” She hangs up. “Okay. I found someone who has Stalinski’s number so that’s just as good as having McCall’s number. That work?” Derek hears a text notification and a ringer. “Hi, is this Stiles? Hi, it’s Erica from… yeah, from gym. You got it. Heh. Um, this gonna sound weird, but I need Scott McCall’s number. I have his dog.”

There’s a pause in which Stiles, voice tinny through the phone, cautiously clarifies the dog in question.

“Yes, uh, _that_ dog. He got hit by a car.”

Uproarious laughter, audible even through the phone. Erica, not impressed, says, “He might be dying.” Which shuts Stiles up. “He definitely caused some collateral and he asked for Scott, so could you just–”

Derek loses it for a while. Slips back into a dark instant where everything tastes like he’s got a penny on his tongue, like something’s pushing on his chest, thickening his blood. He wakes up an instant later with someone shaking him. Familiar smell – faintly Allison, deodorant, rain-wet hoodie, that lousy hair texturizer McCall uses to get his hair to stand up these days. Derek comes around slowly, doesn’t open his eyes. The hands on his shoulder relax a little. 

“Derek?”

“Hey… Scott.” His voice sounds like gravel.

Scott matches his calm. He says, predictably, “You got hit by a car.”

“This is the greatest thing,” says Stiles, “that has ever happened. Derek got hit by a car.”

“Are you making dogs jokes?” Isaac demands.

“Yes.” Derek can hear his shit-eating grin. “Yes, I fuckin’ am.”

Scott ignores them both. “Derek, I think you’re still hurt.”

Derek can’t laugh because his ribs hurt. “I noticed.”

 “Oh my god, he’s dying,” Stiles says with maximum theatrics, but also maximum glee. “He’s making jokes. Get the shotgun, Scott. We’ve gotta put him down. Where do the red ferns grow? Here. I’m sorry, Old Yeller.” Then, when Isaac makes an appalled choking sound, “Yes, Isaac. That was a _dog_ _joke_. Three in a row for your benefit. I can make dog jokes because I’ve had to tolerate this horseshit for the last four months.”

Erica, somewhere near the door, snorts.

“Ignore him. Derek is fine.” Scott says that but his heartbeat ticks up a notch, so he’s definitely not as sure about that as he’s trying to seem in front of his fellow high-schoolers. “Hey. Derek. What do you need?”

“Food. Healing takes a lot of energy.”

“So… we’re here to what?” Stiles gestures expansively. Derek can’t see it, but he can feel and visualize the flail nonetheless. “Get you a fucking Big Mac?”

“Sure. But more like six Big Macs.” And when Stiles sputters indignantly, he adds, “And curly fries.”

Erica, from the door, goes, “HA!”

“I’m gonna _kill_ you!” Stiles must have lunged, but Scott holds him off. “We thought you were dying! I have a bio-chem test tomorrow! _Gaaaaah_!” He furiously digs his keys out of his pockets. “Fuck you, Hale. I’m getting _regular_ fries and, like, a fish burger or something. You better pay me back.” He storms out of the room briefly, then storms back in. “Actually, would fish be a bad idea? Do wolves eat fish? I don’t know. Is red meat better, medically?”

Scott wheels around. “Stiles!”

“What?! It’s a valid question! I don’t know his weird werewolf dietary restrictions.”

“Oh my _god_ ,” Isaac says at last, sounding strained, “can you please just get the food?”

“Okay, I wasn’t going to ask this but: _Who_ are you two? Why are you here? Who invited you to the Beacon Hills Werewolf Club?”

“Derek did,” says Erica, “when he hip-checked speeding car then bled all over my room.”

“This is my fault,” Isaac whispers. “This is totally my fault.”

Scott, thank god, ends this confusion by shouting, “ _Guys_! Shut up!” A brief silence. “Stiles. Get the food. Isaac, Erica, can you get more towels or something? Everyone just stop yelling.” Isaac pulls Erica out of the room and Derek is briefly privy to Stiles and Scott having a whisper argument that boils down to silent but violent pantomiming. Stiles gives a final protest flail, then goes. Scott finally exhales. “Derek, _seriously_ , are you okay?”

Derek opens his eyes to find McCall _hovering_ , his face all scrunched with worry. “Scott, if Isaac needs an alibi, could you give him one?”

“Uhhhhhh,” says Scott in that way that’s more an expressive short-stop than a loss of words. “ _Why_ does he need an alibi? What _happened_?”

“His dad tried to kill him with a car,” says Erica, who appears suddenly in the door way. She didn’t get any towels. Her face has a pitilessness that makes her seem old. Like Laura did at eighteen. “Derek stopped the car. Mr. Lahey went through the wind shield.”

“ _What_?!”

“Don’t worry, McCall. I’ll be Isaac’s alibi. You assholes didn’t even know Isaac was alive before today.”

“What?”

“It’s fine. You probably didn’t know my name before tonight either.”

“That’s not true.” Scott sounds genuinely hurt. “You’re Erica Reyes. We have gym together. Isaac is on the lacrosse team with me. Why wouldn’t I know him?”

“Gold star,” Erica, master of teenaged disenchantment, says tonelessly.

“You’re…” Scott struggles. “… _different_ when you’re not in school.”

“I’m real broke up about it. Derek.” Erica hasn’t stopped looking at him the entire time she’s been talking. “Isaac’s laying down for a second, but I think you should talk to him. His dad was an asshole and I think he deserved every inch of pavements that hit him, but that’s probably not how Isaac feels. He’s also pretty racked about, you know, the attempted vehicular homicide as directed toward you. Are you done… healing or whatever?”

Derek sits up. “I’m okay now.”

Scott frowns. “ _Why_ are you okay now? You couldn’t move a second ago.”

“Because you’re here.” Derek peels a bandage off his stomach, a clean line of pink where Isaac had taped a gash shut. “Aurora effect. Just you being here makes me stronger.”

“Really? That helps? I thought we weren’t…” He glances at Erica. “Uh…”

Erica’s lip curls. “Thought it was bullshit how good you got at lacrosse. But wolves would be real good at chasing balls around a yard, right?”

Scott turns a funny color.

“She’s perceptive,” Derek says, inspecting his ruined clothes. “And, no, we’re not pack, but just being around other wolves, if you’re an alpha and they don’t actively hate you… that helps.” Scott blinks at him. “Thanks for not actively hating me, I guess.”

Scott looks vaguely pleased.

“Wait.” He frowns, pointing vaguely toward the street outside. “If all you needed was me being here, then why is Stiles getting burgers?”

“Because I’m starving and I was sick of hearing him talk.”

Erica goes, “HA!” again, in that un-lady-like way. Then she says, “So can I be a werewolf or is that only for moppy-head losers like McCall?”

“I didn’t bite McCall and, yes, it’s for moppy-head losers only.”

“Hey! I _just_ helped you!”

“Why?” Erica presses, talking over Scott. “How come I can’t be a werewolf?”

Derek, who thought she was joking and now realizes she’s really, really not, blinks at her. “I’m not giving this speech to two of you. I’ll give you the summarized version of what I told Lahey: People, statistically, don’t want to be wolves. They want to be, you know, people. You’re not special. Now move, I’ll go check on Isaac.”

Erica plants herself in the door. “What if the human condition hasn’t worked out for me, you know, historically?”

“Your teen angst will pass.”

“Not if repeated grand mal seizures fry my brain before I’m twenty-five like the docs say.” Derek stops short of pushing her out for the doorway like he’d intended and, instead, stands there peering down at her. Erica’s a little shorter than Scott, who’s not a big person. She’s glaring. She bites her lip, bounces the heel of one foot when he doesn’t answer. She pushes on, angrily, when his prolonged stare gets under her skin. “Seems to me the bite is a permanent solution to my terminal problem. Wouldn’t you agree?”

Scott starts to stammer something about what a bad idea that is, how awful it is being a werewolf, how dangerous, how fucked up, but Erica is only looking at Derek, scouring his face for some sign of sympathy or kinship or want. Something she can sink her teeth into and twist. When she does that, Derek thinks of Laura but only because of the _hunger_ in her stare. Something predatory in and of itself. Eventually she looks away.

“Fine.” She smiles, but it’s not a smile. “Isaac told me you’d say ‘no’. Girl’s gotta try though. Right?”

Then the door’s empty.

Scott, baffled, shakes his head. “What… that _heck_? Why does everyone wanna be a wolf?”

Derek gives him an aggravated look.

“Remember when I told you people would kill for the bite? That there are people out there who’d do _anything_ to have it?” Scott blinks at him, that dumb teenaged boy blank look. It makes Derek want to punch him right in the jaw. “Maybe stop complaining about how hard it is being strong and fast and capable of defending yourself in middle-class suburbia.” He brushes past Scott and moves into the hall. “It might rub people the wrong way.”

He hears Scott murmur, “Sorry,” to himself.

Derek hates that he’s 100% sure the kid means it.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Extreme graphic violence warning for this chapter. Sexual assault depiction.

“Get off my lawn.”

Stiles hurls his backpack down on the porch, claiming it for himself. “This isn’t a lawn, Derek. Lawns are _green_. This though? _This_ is an overgrown dirt pile in the woods. Anyway: Hi. How are you? Still living in the burnt out crack house I see.”

Scott elbows Stiles directly in the gut. He must have misjudged how much power he put into it though, because Stiles doubles over swearing. Usually watching Stiles have a bad time would have vastly improved Derek’s mood, but not today. Today, Derek has concerns. Scott and Stiles are not what concerns him. What concerns him are Allison, Isaac, and Erica all standing behind Scott and Stiles looking hopeful. There’s a literal gang of Beacon Hills teenagers on his porch like some kind of under-aged Scooby gang and they have an air of _determination_ about them. Like they’re here with a goal. They have _conspired_.

Derek scowls. “I’m not going to like whatever this is, am I?”

“We’ve talked,” says Scott.

“I already don’t like it.”

“We don’t care,” says Stiles, right on time. Scott elbows him again.

“We were thinking that we should just set up a regular meet up time. You know, for everyone.” Derek’s face must make it very plain what he thinks of that. “Look, everyone has a lot of questions and I just think it would be more efficient if we all get it out of the way now. Because I don’t know everything about werewolves and I just… think we need to stop keeping people in the dark because keeping people in the dark is what gets us in trouble.”

Derek tilts his head, not like he’s considering Scott’s proposal, but like he’s considering the cost-benefit of murder.

“Maybe I don’t tell you things,” says Derek, “because you’re planning to go to college and be a normal person, not actually be a werewolf. I said I’d stay in town to help you, not give Werewolf 101 to the sophomore class of Beacon Hills.” He points at Allison. “That one just has to open up the family bestiary and you all can study up. Scott is the only one who needs to be here. This isn’t a group activity.” He points at Erica. “That one is just bored.” He points at Isaac… then hesitates. “Actually, he can stay. Literally, the only one who is allowed.”

“I brought Big Macs,” says Erica, holding up a bag.

Derek levels a _look_ at her.

She waggles the bag like that will change his mind. “So you _don’t_ want one?”

“I could eat,” says Allison, nodding. She sets her backpack down. “Fries?

Erica starts tossing burgers out.

“Go away,” Derek says, louder.

“Look,” Scott says, playing interference while the others break out burgers and take seats on the front stoop. “They just have questions and, like, not to be mean but you’re kind of bad about telling people stuff.  If we freeze them out, won’t that make it worse? They already know. Isaac literally saw you go full alpha. _I_ haven’t even seen you go full alpha.”

“That’s because you don’t shift to alpha in front of people unless you have to.”

“Why not?”

“Because it – Stop distracting me. All of your little friends need to leave. _Right now_.”

“Tell me why you shouldn’t shift into alpha form.”

“You _can_ , it just reveals things about you.” When Scott just tilts his head, Derek glances toward the group. They’re chatting and unpacking the food. Allison has homework out on her knees. He looks at Scott again, keeping his voice low. “My sister could turn into a wolf. That was her alpha form. Now think about how that form compared to Peter’s alpha shift.”

Scott thinks about it, nods. “Yeah, that’s right. She didn’t look anything like Peter.”

“Right. Peter’s alpha form was grotesque because he was _fucking psychotic_. Any long time wolf would have realized immediately how insane he was just looking at his shift. I knew, the second I got a clear look at him. Alpha forms are different for every alpha and they mean things.”

“So it would be rude if I asked to see your alpha shift?”

Derek squints at him. “Yeah, Scott. That _would_ be rude.”

He rubs the back of his neck. “Okay, but is it kind of cool? Isaac said it was cool.”

“I’m going to punch you in the mouth. Call it a werewolf team building exercise.”

“Okay. Shutting up about the alpha shift.”

Derek surveys the porch full of children the way you inspect a messy room that needs cleaning and you’re not sure where to start hucking just yet. Allison’s trying to get Erica’s attention on what looks like a worksheet, but in the short time that Derek watches them, Erica looks at him three times. Erica doesn’t look much different in her day-to-day clothes than she did at 11PM in her PJs. Stiles and Isaac are huddled together, eating, while Stiles updates him on the police investigation into the car accident. Because that’s what it is, officially, an accident.

“If any of you talk to anyone about this –” Derek starts to say.

“You’ll kill us?” Stiles cuts in, not sounding impressed.

“No. Just you.”

“Hey, Derek.”

It’s Isaac asking this time, so Derek doesn’t snap. “What is it?”

“Uh, so… the Sheriff said there was blood on the front of the car. The rain ruined most of it, but there was still some in the grill or something. So, he said that the labs came back saying it was animal blood. So they’re saying… that he hit a really big dog or something.” He glances at Stiles, apparently for support before going on. “So… you weren’t worried when you got hit about leaving DNA behind?”

“No.”

A beat.

“Elaborate, motherfucker,” says Stiles. “Because that seems important since you were arrested not very long ago. How did they not cross-match your DNA if you’re in the system?”

Derek briefly assesses the collaborative stares he’s receiving and growls before relenting.

“A shifted werewolf isn’t human.” He considers his phrasing and adds, “When you shift, it changes… everything. Even a partial shift rearranges everything down to the blood. As long as I’m booked while I’m unshifted, my blood is human. It might register as a blood disorder of some kind, slight irregularities in the cells when you look at them, but it’s not anything a lab tech is going to get suspicious about. Or if they do get suspicious, what doctor jumps to lycanthropy as the explanation?” He shrugs, reluctant. “If I left unshifted DNA at a crime scene, they could match that. But they won’t match my wolf self to my human self. Make sense?”

“That seems biologically improbable,” Stiles says immediately, “but you’re mostly magic and your eyes glow when you get grumpy, so I can’t argue.”

“Can you give blood?” Erica asks, not looking up from the worksheet.

Derek hesitates, then shrugs. “Kind of. Like I said, it comes across as a blood disorder. So usually, we’d be rejected anyway, but if someone did get a direct transfusion... it always works. We’re universal recipients and donors. It won’t heal you or change a human, but in an emergency we can give blood indefinitely if needed. My sister did that for someone in Texas.”

Scott’s head twitches up. “ _Really_? I didn’t know that. You never said that.”

“It’s hardly information you’re going to need if you plan to go to college and be normal.”

“But that’s cool! Why don’t you tell me about the cool things?”

“Because he _just_ said all werewolves are limitless blood donors, Scott.” Allison’s voice comes low, but quiet. “There are hunters who might find that _profitable_. Whole groups of people who might find that medically profitable. My family personally has this sworn hatred for anything were and literally kill themselves if they get turned, so blood trafficking is a hard no in my family tree… but it’s not in other circles.”

Scott, clearly surprised, says slowly, “Why didn’t _you_ tell me that?”

She looks unbearably uncomfortable, eyes on her textbook. “The same reason Derek didn’t. You’re going to college.”

Derek thinks the last time Scott looked that wounded, Allison had literally shot him with an arrow.

Luckily (sort of) Erica breaks the silence again. “So werewolves can just about get away with murder?” She looks around at the group. “Just pointing this out: They can shift, kill, then unshift and all the DNA will be some unidentified animal. Isn’t that right?”

Stiles turns slowly to look at Erica. “Are you always this fuckin’ grim? Or do the werewolves just bring that out in you?”

Derek, however, is watching Allison. “You should know the answer to this one, presuming your dad’s bringing you in on the family business.”

Her chin jerks up slightly, a tension leaping into her shoulders. “I’m not _joining_ the family business.”

“That seems dumb, given you’ll need to know the business to stop that business from ganking your boyfriend.”

She glares, scent flaring adrenaline, a tang of anger. “ _Fine_. Law enforcement won’t know what to look for. But hunter communities usually have contacts in just about every major police department. They flag for strange animal attacks. They also know what were-blood looks like in a lab. Presuming they have the werewolf in custody, they might stage an accident or a release so field agents can pick them up on the street. If were blood gets tagged on an un-sub in an unsolved case, then hunters will close it outside the law.”

“So, no,” Derek says. “You don’t get away with it.”

“Okay, so werewolves get… what?” Erica gestures. “Executed by hunters if they catch them in the system?”

“If they don’t have a pack to bail them out, yeah, sometimes.”

Scott frowns. “Is _that_ why you broke out of prison? You… thought the Argents…?”

“Were going to kill me while I was in police custody?” Derek heaves a massive shrug. “Yeah. Pretty much. Considering Kate and Chris were waiting for me, I was right too.” Allison, who is staring at her boots, flinches a little at that and he doesn’t owe her a goddamn thing. Not really, but for some reason he adds, “It’s possible they were just waiting to see what I would do, but I wasn’t going to risk it.”

 “This shit is like Werewolf CSI,” says Stiles. “It’s also _terrifying_. Why are you all so terrifying?”

“Because,” Derek drawls, “when groups of people decide mass murdering other groups of people is okay, things _get_ terrifying, Stiles.”

“I’m trying to lighten the mood, Sourwolf. That was the cue to stop talking about attempted murder in front of the New Kids.” Stiles gestures at Erica and Isaac. “They just got here! They don’t have a PTSD yet. Can we ease into the werewolf murder and genocide talks? Start at silver bullets are bullshit and Scott smells like wet dog, like, 100% of the time?”

“No,” Derek says, “because both of these idiots asked for the bite. So I’m telling all of you, why they wouldn’t survive it.”

“I’m not going to survive anyway,” Erica says brightly.

Stiles tosses his hands up. “Stop trying to sell Derek on biting you. It’s not happening. Look what kind of trouble it caused for Scott. He almost got eaten by a rabid werewolf and the local hunters keep waffling on whether to murder him or not.”

Scott pipes up. “Right and I gotta lie to my mom all the time. My grades suck and I have to make up excuses on the full moon.”

“Right, but your asthma is _gone_ ,” Erica stresses, enunciating, angry. “If I get the bite, I heal. My brain heals. My dad is never around anyway. He’d never notice even if he was around. I can fight hunters and monsters and shit. I can’t fight my own goddamn brain.”

“I don’t bite children,” Derek snaps. “And you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You’re not denying it though.” Erica’s up on her feet now, across the porch and fully intent on getting his face apparently. Isaac immediately lunges up and grabs her elbow, stopping her short, but she kind of jerks forward anyway, like an animal on a leash, teeth bared. “The bite would cure me. You can fix this.”

“ _I don’t bite children_ ,” Derek repeats through his teeth.

Isaac, who knows a little more about Derek’s willingness to be violent, whispers, “Erica, stop it.”

“So what? You’d bite me if I was legal?”

Derek immediately steps off the porch and starts walking off.

“You would wouldn’t you?” Derek isn’t looking but he knows Erica is being physically restrained at this point by Isaac. “You’d do it if I was eighteen!”

Stiles, again with the timing, “That sounds really dirty out loud, Erica. Maybe don’t –”

 “I won’t make it to eighteen!”

To which everyone in the group says something like, “Erica! Jesus Christ.” or “What the fuck.” or “Don’t say that!” and “It’s okay. You’re going to be fine.” But what Derek hears is the _rage_ in Erica’s breathing, the ragged edge of a sob in it that won’t quite become that. Derek’s already in the tree line. He won’t look back now because he really is done talking about this, but he keeps listening to her breathing, focusing in on her among the group. So he hears her very clearly when she says, under her breath, “I bet your _sister_ wouldn’t have run.”

And Derek stops walking.

He turns, looks over his shoulder and –

 

* * *

 

“Relax. It’s only painful at first.”

Derek’s shredding the rag between his teeth. He tries not to move, tries not to breath, tries to stop existing in this dirty, burned up room with a megalomaniac calmly sodomizing him into a heart-stopping series of panic shifts. His body stutters violently with every thrust, adrenaline dumping into his drugged, delirious system – the wolf in him trying to claw out and save him. His bones crack and heat. His guts contract in his belly.

If he were human, this would rip him apart. His un-shifted physique is only just holding together. His insides feel hot. Like the heat when someone cuts him or breaks a bone. His body responding like it responds to a bullet. His rapist shoves his face into the mattress, pulls out slowly, sinks back in. He does it again. Again. A methodic rhythm of hollowing and filling that breaches Derek’s threshold of pain and planes out into split second of nerve-dead shock and for a moment he just _screams_.

Eventually, Deucalion cuts the gag from his mouth.

“Shift and call for help.” When Derek ignores him, he leans down and murmurs, “If you don’t roar and bring the pack here, we’re going to keep going like this until you like it, Derek. You think that will never happen, but it will. Do you want that, Derek?” His hand closes over Derek’s trachea, his mouth hot in the shell of his ear. “Or would you _prefer_ that?”  

“Go _fuck_ yourself.” Derek hears himself say it. There’s blood behind his teeth. “You a _fanatic_ fucking –”

Deucalion shifts. Not full alpha but… enough. Derek doesn’t have time to fight, time to process what it _feels_ like when someone shifts inside him. Derek screams, clawing mindlessly at the bed, the headboard, anything. He feels his balls tighten, every muscle in his groin spasm and clench. His toes go numb. His fingers go numb. He comes hot, something like agony unfurling in his belly and pulsing itself down every fucking nerve. He’s hot. He’s unbearably hot. _Wounded_ hot. Bullet in the gut, ribs crushed, spine shattered _wounded_. Like he’s dying. He can’t _think_. He can’t –

He’s getting hard again.

“Stop.” Derek’s panting. His tongue feels dry, his head foggy. Another quick thrust and he’s writhing, hips bucking. ” _Stop_!” The next stroke slams him forward, palms flat to the headboard. Derek’s vision goes narrow, his world crushing inward, shrinking to heat and darkness. It feels like he’s bleeding inside, like his guts are being abraded. He can’t breathe. This isn’t normal. This isn’t right. Something’s happening. “I can’t… I _can’t_...”

Derek’s lifting his hips, his knees digging into the mattress, bracing himself to take it -- “Good _boy_.” – and screams when he gets it. Derek’s entire fucking spine ignites, lines of heat and nerve hardwired straight to his dick. Deucalion grabs a fistful of his hair, yanking his head back, mouth against his ear.

“ _Shift_.” His voice shivers through Derek’s fucking blood, the Alpha Voice digging deep into the animal core of his brain. “Do it.”

The change comes instantly. Rips through Derek in a way it’s never done before – possesses him in a fit of cracks and jolts, his anatomy going nuclear. He orgasms through the shift. He’s… never done that… before. He wishes he hadn’t. The climax splits through his nerves even as they are lit up with transformation and he’s screaming, riding it out, wanting it to end, just fucking end. He’s so fucking tired. It just goes on and on, his cock pulsing until he feels like he’s going to come dry, nerves firing into the roots of his spine and lighting him up until, finally, his bones settle and the muscles in his groin finally unclench. He collapses. Blacks out. Comes back, panting and slack, drooling slightly against the mattress. His eyes ache infra-red, his mouth crowded now by fangs, his bones throbbing.

Behind him, Deucalion’s already fucking him again. A slow push of pressure, steady, deliberate. Derek can’t process why until his whole body bends suddenly into it and – _nonono_ – its _good_ , it’s _pleasure_. Pure and relentless heat glowing up through him from the inside out. Derek wants to _fucking die_. He’s writhing, eyes closed to everything but the sensation of this man’s cock inside him, stretching him out and filling him up. How good ( _no, you psycho! he’s raping you, he’s raping you no no no_ ) it feels. Right on the _fucking_ money. Like someone drove their thumb down on a nerve and started grinding. Derek’s arching into the mattress. He’s twisting, panting, the compound slick of sweat and semen smearing his belly and thighs. Deucalion snaps his hips forward. Derek comes again, screaming, incoherent and animal.

He’s losing it.

He’s losing control. He can’t –

His attacker’s hand twists in his hair, gripping tight while calmly fucking him speechless, driving an endless river of heat and pressure into the base of his spine, lighting him up like heroine. He’s drugged. He’s so _drugged_. He can feel it (“ _Harder. You can fuck me harder.”)_ as every nerve slaves to the sensation and becomes conduit for the (“ _As hard as you want. Please. Inside me. I want it inside me.”)_ eternal fucking orgasm that consumes him (“ _Please, don’t stop. Don’t stop!)_ from the inside out.

He’s hyperaware in fragments, disassociated pieces of himself: His hands suddenly, blunt human fingers dug into someone's back. His own mouth, lock-jawed open in a scream that never comes. The fist knotted in his hair. His cock aching hard. He’s on his back, his legs around someone’s waist, fingers in his mouth. Someone’s tongue is on his throat. Someone’s cock thick inside him. A hand working his erection, wet with his own coming. Another mouth sucking at his right nipple, licking down his belly, his thigh. Smells like shift, like skin, like arousal, like his own repeated climax.

He’s panting, moaning, slick with sweat, his own and not. It feels like there are at least two people on the bed with him. He smells blood. (His own.) He comes on himself, feels someone lick him clean and rises instinctively against the mouth. The cock in his ass swells deeper, changes inside him. He screams – because it hurts, because it doesn’t, because he likes it, because he doesn’t. Hands pin him down. The cock inside him drags half out and his insides glow hot instantly, aching empty until the returning thrust. He arches and goes tight, clenching around the penetration that becomes a rhythm of fast, shallow little strokes that make his dick jolt and swell with every beat. He’s hard again in seconds, held down, being fucked blind.

He smells someone new: a woman. Leather jacket, shea shampoo, human. He can’t focus on her; her face a smear in his vision. She’s got her hand on his forehead and jaw. Why can’t he see her face? She says, “You’re killing him. How much did you give him?”

Kali says, “Like your voo-doo shit cares.”

Derek says, “Please.” He tries to reach for her, his fingers touch her jacket. “Help me. _Please_.”

“Do you want it?” The stranger’s fingers touch his aching mouth, running over his lips. “Say ‘yes’ and this stops.” Her fingers taste like blood and he spits it out. “Goddammit. Say ‘yes’. Just do it. Save yourself.”

The alpha with his cock inside him adjusts his angle slightly. Derek’s belly pulses hot, tensing up, insides drawing inward in a way that has his dick hard instantly. The massive thing inside him pulls out, slowly, hollowing his asshole until he’s empty, panting, thighs spread, cock leaking between his legs. Fingers slide inside him instead. He moans, hips rising and falling with the slow insistence of the hand inside him. The soles of his feet go numb. His cock runs with pre-come. Sweat drips down his back. He’s limp, finger-fucked and delirious. He whimpers, twitching, entire body humming and the pit in his guts isn’t want but _loneliness_ because no one is going to stop this –

Kali’s mouth presses into his ear, murmuring, “Do you want his cock back?” She kisses him a little, tongue and fangs. “Ennis doesn’t like fucking men, but he made the exception for you, hon.” She slides a hand between Derek’s legs. “I can tell you’re grateful. Why don’t you beg for it?”

The fingers slide out and someone grabs his ankles ( _no cuffs, they removed them, took them off to make it easier, put him on his back_ ) shoves his knees into his chest, exposing him for other alpha’s cock, the head sinking into him, pushing past the tight ring of muscle into his body. Derek screams until the sound is bestial. _(“Don’t stop. Please, don’t stop. Fuck me hard as you want. I’ll do it. I want it! Yes! God!”)_

He feels the human’s hands on his face, cupping his jaw.

She says, “Out loud. Get him to say it out loud.”

Ennis growls a little, shoving deeper, the thick, hot friction of his cock sending jolts of lighting from his prostate to the back of his teeth. Derek’s sobbing by the time the fucking resumes, Ennis pumping his asshole in a relentless series of full in and out thrusts that leave him nerveless, pliant, his brain lit up and split down the middle. Kali tells him to beg in her Alpha Voice, tells him to spread his legs, tells him to _speak_. He’s slurring by the end.

“Please. Stop.” He’s fucking dying. He’s sure of it. “I’ll do anything you want.”

“Say ‘yes’,” says the human. “Just say that.”

Every particle in his fucking soul screams ‘ _NO’_. He cries, “ _Yes_.”

Ennis comes inside him, one of a dozen times, the hot sluice of it filling and leaking out of him. Derek comes immediately after, asshole clenching as his dick goes unfathomably hard, pulsing come onto his belly. He rides it out, whimpering, arching, his own fluids running down his abdomen and ribs. He sees black swarms moving across his vision and the woman who smells like shea bends down and kisses him, her tongue warm and coppery between his teeth. She says something he can’t understand, in a language that makes his bones shudder. She spits in his mouth, then his forehead, smears it down his face to his throat.  

“It's done.” The human says when she lifts her head finally. “And you need to stop. He’s at his ceiling.”

“He said ‘yes’ didn’t he?”

Ennis pulls out of Derek, a swift yank that makes the younger wolf choke.  “If we’re done here, Kali.”

“I thinks he’s still good.” Kali hops off the bed, following him while the man zips his pants and re-adjusts his belt. “Sure you don’t want get in a few more rounds?”

“No. He smells like hex-shit now.”

“It’s not a fucking hex,” says the witch. She’s standing in the door now, her face still blurred. “You want to build a nation on corpses. This is how you do it. Kali. Don’t _touch_ him until dawn. It will be done by –”

Derek shifts.

Kali spins, startled, just in time to catch the massive backhand that smashes her through the far wall. Ennis lunges, bones cracking into first stage shift, but Derek’s already gone alpha. Ennis moves in slow motion to him, easy prey. It’s easy, punching the steel-blade point of every claw through his guts. Derek grabs him by the throat with his other hand, too big now for Ennis’ neck, so it covers his whole head. Then he just _hurls_ him through the same wall Kali went through, blood spraying the room down. He’s soaked with it, steaming with it.

The witch in the door doesn’t run. He hunches forward onto all fours, towering over her, closing the space between them and she doesn’t move. She reaches one hand toward him – small and brown and soft.

“You’re okay,” she says gently. She smells familiar suddenly, like home suddenly. Her voice makes his heart ache. “Shh. It’s okay, Derek. Calm down.”

Her hand smooths along the underside of his jaw, sliding into the fur, along his cheek. She ignores the two-inch fangs, the mouth full of bone-white needles, the bear-like breathing. Half a ton of monsterous bone and sinew bristling fur and fangs and she hums a lullaby. The wolf growls and the room shakes.  She strokes his face, fingers sliding back behind his ear and he wants to curl around her. He wants to sleep. He’s so tired. She’s warm and comfort and _home_.

“That’s it. Just calm down. I’ve got you.” She run her other hand up his muzzle and he turns his face into it. “It’s okay, sweetie.”

 _Sweetie_.

He bolts. He’s out the window. He’s in the woods. The moon hangs in a half-bowl in the sky and he’s running, plunging through the trees, the dark, and he’s gone. He’s gone –

 

* * *

 

“Just make it to eighteen,” he says.

Erica’s crying into her stale Big Mac. It’s not a good look, but Derek’s never met anyone that looked good while sobbing and definitely not sobbing with a mouthful of fast-food burger. He’s 100% sure Laura would have known what to say to a sobbing sixteen-year-old to get her to stop crying, but he doesn’t so he just stares out into the woods and pretends he can’t hear her sniffling.

“You promise though?” Erica says that through a mouth full of food.

“Eat,” he says.

“But you promise?”

“Yeah. If you feel the same way in a few years, I’ll come back.”

They sit there a bit longer, Erica sitting on the front step of his porch Derek sitting next to her, staring into the forest with a Coca-Cola can in his hand. It’s dark out. Erica hiked back out here on foot in the dead of night to yell at him some more. It didn’t work out that way. She just cried on his porch. He’s getting pretty sick of teenagers crying on his porch, but at least this one isn’t a hunter.

“And it’s not because I feel sorry for you. I don’t.”

“Why then?”

He shrugs. “You feel right. Like a wolf, I mean. I’m just not sure that’s enough.”

“Is it really that dangerous, being a werewolf?”

“Not always. Most of my childhood was pretty normal: school, homework, family trips. The difference is the five or six times men with guns came looking for us. Most people don’t have that happen to them.” Derek keeps his eyes on the forest, listening to the steady rhythm of her heart. “You could have a different alpha, you know. I can ask a bigger pack, see if they’re looking. Satomi Ito has a pack two hours north of here.”

“I don’t know her.”

“Yeah, but my mother did and she’s safer.”

“How is Satomi safer?”

“She’s got money, a network, and allies. A lot of important people are married or bitten into her pack. Not even hunters mess with the Ito Pack. It just worked out for her that way.”

“How so?”

Derek shrugs. “More of her extended family survived immigrating to America.”

“Where did your family immigrate from?”

“Germany.”

Erica looks at him. “Hale’s a German last name then?”

“German-Jewish.”

She stares a little longer. Derek just drinks his soda.

“War’s a bad time for werewolves. Hunters can do a lot of damage if there’s already a genocide going on.” Erica says nothing. He sets the soda can down on the porch. “I’ll drive you home. Don’t tell Scott we had this conversation. He’s not going to be in a pack, so he doesn’t need to know this.”

“Two years is a long time. He might change his mind.”

“I don’t care.”

Erica stands up, wiping her face. “Right. That’s why you stuck around even though you keep saying it’s dangerous: because you don’t care.”

“Just get in the car.”

“Sourwolf.”


	4. Chapter 4

“Derek, you need to tell me what’s wrong.”

Alan Deaton – Scott’s boss, ostensible expert in the supernatural, guy Derek threatened a few months ago – is crouched in front of him, hands empty, head tilted. Derek can’t quite nail Deaton’s age, but he gets the impression the man’s in his early forties from his demeanor, but also the impression that he’s one-hundred and eighty from the way he smells right now. Like old trees smell. Alan Deaton smells like an old growth forest. How did he not notice that before? Deaton continues to look at him, eyes dark as the hollows in knotted firs. Derek blinks.

Wait. Why is Deaton here?

“Derek. Is that your blood or someone else’s?”

 _Oh_.

Derek looks down at his sweat-soaked, blood stained shirt, stiff in some places and clinging in others. His jeans are dirty, muddy from the knee down, shredded at the heel as though he’d been running for a long time. From a quick look around, he’s crouched in a supply closet – bulk paper towels and cleaning supplies. The place smells like bleach. His nose burns. There’s bleach on his clothes. He has the vague feeling he, at some point, thought dumping bleach on his clothes would wipe out his scent? He’s not sure when he went fugue, but he must have at some point after… after… Derek looks at Deaton. Meeting his gaze feels like staring into an ancient grove. Something he could _run_ into –

“Derek. I don’t understand that.”

It takes him a second to realize he’s not speaking a human language. His mouth’s full of teeth and the wrong shape. He shakes it off like rainwater, shakes the shift and feels it surge back beneath his skin, the wolf pushing up through fangs first, the structure of his skull buckling and cracking to accommodate. He swallows it down… then doubles over and pukes black shit onto the tile. He coughs, pukes again, fucking gallons of this rotten black sludge until he’s gasping, bent down with the retching.

“Fuck,” Deaton says calmly. “Laura said you were trouble and I didn’t believe her.”

Derek’s still gagging, palms down on the floor, but Deaton says her name and amidst the head-fucked chaos, he puts it together – a single straight line in the torrential downpour. He stops choking long enough to look up at the veterinarian who is not a veterinarian.

Deaton sighs. “You seemed so quiet growing up.”   

“You’re…?” Derek shakes his head slightly. “Laura said… you…?”

“Yes. Me.” Deaton’s eyes are warm and dark, like the shadows in a deep wood. He speaks steadily and there’s something in his voice now, in his scent – familiar but wild, like inhaling old earth and that no longer seems strange. “I thought I was finally done with Hale Pack dramatics, but then I went and hired a werewolf, so I guess it’s my own fault.” Deaton studies him carefully, like he might look at a wounded animal. “You were non-verbal for a bit there. Are you with me?”

“Yes.”

“I’m a druid, but I don’t speak wolf. Let’s stay bi-pedal, please. Who did you fight with?”

“Alpha pack.”

Deaton’s gaze sharpens immediately. “Is it Duke?”

Derek nods. “Attacked me last night. All of them at once. I – I couldn’t –”

“Those don’t look like your clothes.”

Derek blinks at the non-sequitur, then down at the loose T-shirt and jeans. The shirt says PARTY IN THE USA in big block letters and the jeans are too tight on his thighs.

 “I… stole them?” he hazards.

“Okay. So you were full alpha and have no memory of it, but were, apparently, cognizant enough to not run around naked afterward.” When Derek gives him a dumb stare, Deaton nods, stoic in the face of a shit storm. “That could be bad,” he says with an infuriating kind of serenity. “Let’s hope you kept out of sight while in full-shift. Your alpha form is more… intimidating than Laura’s, I assume?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s fine. What do you remember?”

“Deucalion. His pack. They want me to join them.”

“And you fought them off?”

_Relax. It only hurts at first. Beg for it. Smellslikehex-shit.Sweetie –_

Derek jerks back to the room, teeth gritted, fangs pushing through. He shakes it off. “Yeah.”

“Derek. There’s a cot in my back office. You need to lie down. When did you last eat or drink anything?”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re not fine. You’re barefoot, bloody, a little strung out and hiding in my supply closet. Also, you just puked about a quart of blood on my floor. So, you will listen to my worldly druid advice or so help me I will drag you out of here by the scruff of your neck.”

“Gimme a minute.”

“Derek.” Deaton lowers his voice. “They can’t get in here. I’ve sealed this place in mountain ash and closed the circle. I wiped your scent from the grounds. They won’t find you here.” He holds out a hand. “Now, let me help.”

Later, sitting on a small cot in Deaton’s back office, a hot mug of tea in his hands and blanket around his shoulders, Derek tries not to feel like he’s a kid. That’s difficult when Deaton hands him a sandwich and makes him eat it. Then makes him eat another one. Then another one and by then Derek realizes he’s starving, his guts a hollow clench of hunger and ache. His migraine goes with the hunger, so do the shakes. For a while he just eats whatever Deaton puts in front of him until the man pulls up a chair and takes a seat across from him.

“If you had a pack, you’d be fine by now.”

Derek grits, “I am aware of that.”

“Derek. Are you with me? You sound drunk.” When Deaton gets a confused stare, instead of an answer, he says, “You’re new to alpha regeneration. It’s faster, more total. There is a disconnect psychologically between what they did to you and the fact you’re completely healed now. If you’re feeling dissociative after combat, that’s normal.”

Combat.

Derek swallows the last of a ham sandwich and says, “Sorry I puked on your floor.”

“Hmm. You should have seen your mother after her first big heal.” Deaton shrugs. “She tried to knock my head off.”

 A frown. “Really?”

“Yes. You’re actually remarkably calm for a new alpha. Drink your tea.”

Derek blinks, then peers into the mug, then at Deaton. “Is there a _sedative_ in this?”

“Yes. But a small one. Like I said, your mother tried to knock my head off.” Deaton keeps his tone even, conversational. He studies Derek’s face. After a while he asks. “Did you manage to kill any of them?”

“I dunno.” Derek palms the mug, focuses on the roll of liquid, the smell, bitter, herbal. “I sucker-punched one of them. Went full wolf before he could, knocked ‘em around.”

“Good. Duke, Ennis, and Kali are all older and stronger than you. They’re also insane serial killers who murdered their own packs, so I encourage you to fight as dirty as possible if you want to survive this.” Deaton ignores Derek’s surprised stare and says, “Have you accessed the family vault yet?”

Derek jerks slightly. “What? _No_. How do you know –?”

“I was Talia’s emissary for a long time, Derek. Why haven’t you accessed it?”

“I’m not a… You don’t touch the vault unless the pack is really in danger. The last time a vault was cracked it was World War II and whole bloodlines were being wiped out. Laura didn’t open the vault even after the fire. I’m not–”

 “ _Derek_. Whether you have a pack right now or not, you’re the last Hale alive and an alpha pack is coming after you. They will not care that you’re alone or that you don’t have a pack. They _will_ torture you and, ultimately, they will _kill_ you when they realize they can’t make you like them.” Deaton leans back. Derek hadn’t noticed that he’d leaned in. “You need to level the playing field.” He takes the empty tea mug from Derek’s hands and reprimands gently, “Crack the vault.”

“I don’t _need_ to crack the vault. I have money.”

“You can get that easily, immediately?” Deaton demands.

“That’s _pack_ money.”

“You _are_ the pack, Derek.”

“No. I’m not. I have beer that’s been in my trunk longer than I’ve been an alpha. I’m _not_ the pack. That money isn’t mine.” He glares for a moment. Then he stops glaring. “I’m not the pack.” He stands up, dropping the blanket from his shoulders. “I’m not the pack.” And when Deaton continues giving him this look like he’s lost his goddamn mind, he says, for emphasis, “ _Fuck_ ,” and lunges for the phone on the desk. Deaton, for his part, watches him do it without protest. Derek dials and listens to the tone, his pulse in his throat. The phone connects. “Scott?”

“DEREK?!” It’s not Scott. “WHERE THE _FUCK_ HAVE YOU BEEN?! HELP US!”

“Stiles. Where are you?”

“I’m driving and there are motherfucking werewolves chasing my _motherfucking_ car in _your_ motherfucking car. What the fuck is going on? Who are the psycho twins in the Camero?”

“They stole my car?”

“IS THAT THE MOST IMPORTANT QUESTION YOU SHOULD ASKING RIGH -!?”

“Stiles! Where is Scott?”

“Bleeding in the backseat, Derek! He saw them in your car and came out to confront them.” Stiles exhales hard. “They jumped him, man. I don’t – oh fuck. Hold on.” There’s a groan of tires, Stiles shifting gears and swearing. “They’re fucking with us. They can’t attack me while I’m circling downtown, but if we get out of this car I dunno. I’ve been doing this for like twenty minutes now.” He breathes fast, hard, a little ragged. “Derek, Scott’s hurt pretty bad.”

“The twins are alphas. If they hit Scott, his wounds are going to heal slow.”

“Derek, he can’t fight. You gotta… you gotta do something.”

Derek looks up at Deaton who takes the phone from him.

“Stiles. This is Deaton, Scott’s boss. Come to the animal clinic. Drive straight here, come through the front door, it will be open and I will be waiting. You and Scott come behind the front desk and go to the back room. Now, listen, you _must_ get behind the desk. If you can do that, I swear to you that I can keep them at bay but you need to get there without them getting hold of you or Scott. That means you need to pull into this parking lot with a lead. Can you do that?”

“Derek’s there right? He can help me?”

Derek takes the phone back. “Stiles, I can’t help you. I have to find the others.”

“What _others_?”

“Isaac and Erica. Anyone that’s been around me in the last month.”

There’s a pause. “I think Isaac said he was staying with Erica over the weekend. He… go there. Go.”

Derek hands the phone to Deaton and starts for the door.

“Derek.” He stops and Deaton tosses him a cellphone and a ring of keys. “Stay in contact. Take my car and try to avoid a fight. If the older alphas are waiting for you… you’re too hurt to win.”

“Your confidence is appreciated.”

“Just don’t die.”

It takes him five minutes to speed across town to the outskirts of Beacon Hills, where Erica’s two story home stands lonely at the end of a half-developed cul-de-sac on the edge of the woods. He parks in the street, diving out of the car and races to the front door. The morning cold steams his breath, his footsteps heavy as he rushes up the front steps. The door hangs open on its hinges, wrenched crooked in the frame. He’s through the door. Down the hall. He can hear it already, in the kitchen where Erica and Isaac must have retreated, the sobbing, the smell –

Derek skids into the kitchen through the hallway door and stops dead.

Erica, her blonde hair matted in blood, flinches when she sees him. She’s huddled between the kitchen island and the oven with a knife in her hand. Her right thigh’s a spreading liquid red, her jeans bitten through. There’s a boy Derek doesn’t know – teenager, smells like Erica, black, about sixteen, built like an athlete – on his hands and knees on the floor beside her. He’s bleeding profusely from a bite wound in his shoulder.

He has his hands around Isaac’s throat.

For a moment, Derek can’t make sense of what he’s looking at – the scent of blood overpowering, a butcher’s shop stink, arterial spray on the cabinets and nice granite counter top. Isaac’s half conscious, lying on his back staring up at Boyd, one hand knotted in his shirt. Derek registers finally, why the black kid is holding Isaac like that, with such terrible fear – Isaac’s throat is cut. This is an attempt to stop him from bleeding out on Erica’s kitchen floor. Derek goes down on his knees.

“Move.” He puts his hands over the kid’s. “I’ve got it.”

“Who the fuck –?” he starts to say.

“That’s Derek,” Erica cuts in. “He’s okay, Boyd. He’s okay.”

“Move,” Derek says.

Boyd’s fingers, slick with red, slide out from under his and Derek clamps his palms over the two long, shallow gashes that appear to have just barely nicked an artery in Isaac’s throat. Isaac’s pulse against his fingers feels thready, the failing pumps of an organic machine. All the color’s gone from his face and he’s breathing shallow. He stares up at him, unfocused, but he doesn’t move a muscle – just lying here, palms flat on the floor, one knee drawn up. He opens his mouth, but can’t get anything out.

Derek says, “You’re fine. You’re going to be fine.”

“She cut the land lines.” Erica’s not sobbing, but only because she’s forcing herself not to. “She took our phones. I can’t… why did she leave us like…?”

“It’s shallow,” Derek murmurs. “I can… I think…”

Boyd says, “We need a fucking ambulance. What are you –?”

Derek leans down, presses his forehead to Isaac’s and in the space between one heartbeat and the next, the scope of his focus collapses inward until there’s just the pulse under his fingers, the rushing sound of Isaac’s heartbeat. Derek breathes in, the change sliding through him in slow lines of warmth. Regenerative heat, every muscle in his body warming with potential energy… Then Derek breathes out and the same heat instantly _rips_ out of him, torn free of his fucking body through his hands. Like a plant by the root system. Like someone reached into his wrists and started pulling his veins like loose threads in a blanket.

The _pain_ dominates everything – red on red on white. Like an electric current burning a dull circuit through him with Isaac as the heat-sink. It _hurts_. A deep internal agony he’s never known before, but Derek holds on. He holds on and holds on until it feels like his spine it going to unravel and he can’t feel his fingers anymore. He holds on until he starts to…

_Careful, Der. Don’t get heroic on me._

Derek lets go. The cut in Issac’s neck looks inflamed, angry and raw, but there’s no arterial gush. Just a flesh wound. Erica immediately bundles a dish towel against his throat and Derek sits back on his knees, then falls back against the pantry, grabbing at the door, leaving a bloody hand print smeared down the front.

Boyd, seated on the floor nearby, says, “What the fuck are you?”

Eric’s staring at him. “I… I didn’t know you could do that.”

“Well, I wasn’t sure either,” Derek pants.

“No, seriously,” Boyd says louder. “What the fuck are you?”

“I’m a mermaid obviously.”

“ _What_?”

Derek allows himself two seconds to breathe, then grabs the edge of the counter and pulls himself up.

“We need to go.”

“She bit me,” Erica whispers. “Derek… she bit all of us.”

“I know. C’mon.” Derek digs the car keys from his back pocket, holds them out. He feels drunk. Heinously fucked up. “One of… one of you needs to drive. I can’t.” He looks at all three of their blank terrified faces. “Christ. Do _none_ of you have a driver licen—?”

Erica screams. “DEREK! LOOK OUT!”

He should have heard her coming. Or maybe not. It’s hard to hear a werewolf coming if they don’t want to be heard.

Kali hooks an arm around his throat from behind, jams her fist into the crook of her opposite arm and yanks him backwards into the hallway. Erica screams, grabs the car keys from the floor ( _good girl_ ) and Derek sees nothing after that. He shifts, claws, at the woman behind him. She’s dragging him down the hall.

Derek ducks his chin to stop her crushing his trachea, grabs her arm and kicks off the kitchen door-frame, driving the older alpha into the opposite wall with enough force to punch through stucco. Dust clogs his nose. He thrashes, pinwheeling his legs, kicking at the wall, but she just rolls and keeps dragging him down the corridor, tightening her sleeper-choke in under his jaw. She smells like blood, like wolf. She hauls him, thrashing, through the back door into the little fenced yard, open at the back to the trees.

“What are you doing, baby?” Derek kicks up, bucking in her hold but she yanks him around, dragging so he can’t get his balance. “What are you doing, huh? Why’d you run?”

She torques hard right, throwing Derek to the ground so hard he hits the grass skidding a full four feet, ripping up the turf on impact. He lunges up immediately… then falls back down. He almost pukes, loses all sense of equilibrium and for a drunk, terrifying second collapses on the lawn and lies there stunned.

“What’s wrong, Derek?”

The world lilts to the left, spinning on a sickening axis. Derek gets one knee under him, hands curled in the grass, gripping it like that will hold him still while the rest of the world spins. Kali circles toward him, the bones in her fingers creaking as the calcium gathers density. She blurs. Erica’s backyard blurs. Pins and needles have begun to climb his limbs from his fingers up toward his face, his arms going weak as the bottom drops from his stomach. He growls, hackles up, trying desperately to summon something. Some vestige of rage, survivalist hatred, anything but the black suck of nauseous exhaustion that’s swelling through him. Greater than the need to live, suddenly, is the need to just lie down and _give up._

Kali moves in. He can smell her – the coconut oil, her pack, Isaac’s blood, her fucking _intent_. She’s a motion blur of heat and laughter.

She says, “Can’t get it up again, hon? That’s a stamina thing. I can teach you that.”

Derek draws up everything he has and lunges – wakes up on his back with his nose broken, sky spinning over him. He spits blood into the grass, his whole face throbbing red, tears running over. His nose isn’t healing. He swallows copper, wipes it from his face, but it just keeps running. Kali laughs. She could kill him. He knows it. She could rip his throat out and hold it gaping until he bled out past his ability to heal. She could gut him, rip his sternum out of his chest, break every bone, but she just keeps circling, following him as he crawls back from her.

“Stupid,” she says. “Healing that boy. You didn’t have that to give.”

“Fuck you,” Derek says through the blood.

“He’s mine now, you know. All of them. Mine.”

“ _Fuck_ you.”

Which, for some reason, pisses her off. She lunges forward, seizes him by the forearms and immediately cracks both of his wrists. He doesn’t scream. He sinks his teeth into her arm, rips a chunk from the bone gets back-handed so hard the zygomatic arch cracks below his right eye. Half blind, he still manages to spit in her face.

“Oh, young blood.” Kali wipes it off with her palm. “I’m gonna _feed_ you that kid.” She rears back and punches him across the jaw, grabs him by his shirt. “We gave you a chance. Remember that?” She leans down, mouth full of fangs, eyes lit internally red and drags her tongue across his throat. He thrashes. She just laughs, shouting: “You’re _fucked_! You’re fucked, Hale! We’re going to eat you alive –!”

The shotgun blast interrupts her. It also rips her whole shoulder apart in a red burst of blood and muscle.

Kali hits the ground shrieking. Derek falls back. Kali’s blood is on his face, on his tongue. He can’t move. Feeling every wound pulse hot on the geography of his body, he just lies in the grass panting as the yard seems to roll beneath him. Very, very far away, someone fires a second round from the 12-gauge pump-action shotgun. That someone keeps walking forward, sighting down the barrel, firing over and over, shelling the spent casings hot from the chamber with each shot. She keeps coming until she’s standing next to him. (Over him.) The air burns of wolfsbane.

“Derek Hale?” The person with the 12-gauge kneels down, but all he can see is the sky. Kali’s out beyond the tree line now, moving in the foliage, screaming, psychotic, _changing_. “Hey, you need to get up. That bitch is mad as hell and she’s gonna come back quick. Do not pass out.”

He is definitely passing out.

“No. Do not do that.”

He’s doing that.

“Goddammit, don’t you dare —!”

 

* * *

 

 

“—be such a grump. C’mon.”

Laura takes his hands in hers, closes them between her palms. Then she kisses the knuckles of his fingers and bares fangs at him. She smells like dry shampoo and her old leather jacket. Like ten hours on the road in the summer heat. The motel room stinks like ancient tobacco smoke and years of human transient seeped into the walls and carpet, the yellowing paper peeling from the wooden paneling.

Derek, sitting on the bed, feels dumb while his big sister kneels on the floor and holds his hands in hers like she’s warming them. Her jacket’s big, but she’s pulled the sleeves up so he can see her bare forearms, where the blueish veins beneath the skin get dark and rise up against the thin porcelain membrane of her wrists. She keeps smiling at him.

“See? I’m healing you. You’re good.”

Derek is seventeen, almost eighteen. They are six months on the road and ten states away from California. Laura does this every night.

“Laura, stop.”

“Nope.”

Her skin feels cool, an aloe spreading through his blood. He tries to pull his hand from hers, but she’s much stronger than him and she just shakes her head, not letting go. He hates her for this, for sitting in this stinking motel room hundreds of miles from home while the wolf inside her opens its jaws and tries to lathe a wound in him that doesn’t exist. She tells him she’s healing him. She never says from what, but he assumes from the grief, from the gut-sucking skull-fucked horror of their whole goddamn family burnt alive beneath their childhood home. Like that is a recoverable injury.

“Hey.” She bumps her forehead against his. “Look at me. Okay? No bullshit. Are you with me?”

He looks at her, looks at her electric blue and bares fangs back. “ _Always.”_

“Fuck yeah!” She kisses him on the nose. “You remember: We are _motherfucking_ Hales. We don’t roll over. You hear me? Cuz we’re the stuff of _legend_ little brother. Just wait. We’re the kind of wolf that hunters _talk_ about.” Her eyes flash red and the room shivers. She leans in close and whispers, “We’re the fucking wolves of the motherfucking West. You and me? We’re the next Storm Dog. The next Beast of Israel. Nations are gonna walk behind us, kid.”

“ _You’re_ crazy.”

“You bet I am.” She yanks him into a bear hug, long waves of hair sticking to his face. He relaxes, lets his alpha roll around with him, yelling, “We’re pack. Forever. Aint ever gonna leave ya. Promise. I promise –”

 

* * *

 

“— he’s cold.” Scott’s voice, coming from somewhere overhead, cracks a little. “I don’t think it’s working. He’s not healing.”

“Just keep trying.” Deaton’s voice, strange, multi-tonal somehow, underlain with dark reverb. “You’re doing fine, Scott. Just be patient.”

“Why isn’t he healing? This worked before.”

“You’re not pack, Scott. Derek… Did he ever explain this?” A beat, watery and infinitely far away. “No. Of course not. It’s difficult to explain but he tapped a power he shouldn’t have. Now, without a pack, the backlash is hitting him directly. He’s…” Deaton sighs. “He’s fading. He’s too young an alpha for what he did.”

“He’s _dying_ because he doesn’t have a pack?”

“No. He’s dying because of an insurmountable series of grievous injuries and his choice to keep on fighting through said grievous injuries.” The abject moral outrage on Scott’s face must have an effect because Deaton sighs. “If he had pack, they could draw off some of the cost but he didn’t take a single beta since he rose.”

“What… what if I join his pack?”

A pause.

“That’s kind of you, Scott.” Deaton’s voice is the voice of a man trying to decide how adult to be with a teenager. “But, first of all, that’s not up to you. Secondly, Derek is an alpha and an adult. He chose to do this. Don’t make decisions based on his well-being alone.”

“So what? I just…” Scott struggles with it. “I just let him _die_?”

“It’s not up to you to save him,” says Deaton gently. “You’re doing enough just being here.”

Scott sniffs, quieting a little.

Then, “Fuck it.” He growls. “No. No way. How do we do it? If I wanted to be part of his pack right now?”

“You _can’t_ , Scott. This kind of thing… it’s the wildest magic in existence. It’s instinct and ancient alignments. There is nothing _to_ do. Derek holds you as pack or he doesn’t. You can want him as alpha as badly as you want, but if you aren’t already pack to him, it won’t work.”

“He said we were brothers once.”

“Words aren’t enough.”

“He said he’d _stay_.”

“That’s not enough.”

“That’s dumb!” Scott yells, so angry at the injustice that he’s almost in tears. “Werewolf magic is _dumb_! If Derek said it and it wasn’t bullshit, then it should be enough to –!”

Derek closes his hand on Scott’s arm. “Stop _yelling_.” He opens his eyes to glare into Scott’s stunned beta-bright eyes, the kid’s skull haloed by the overhead lights. He growls. “You’re giving me headache.”

“Ha!” Scott’s whole face bursts into golden relief. He grabs Derek by the shoulders. “It worked!” He laughs. “Holy shit! Holy shit, are you okay?”

“Stop. _Shaking_. Me.”

“Oh. Right. Sorry, dude.”

There must be a rule against calling your maybe-alpha ‘dude’ but Derek can’t string the words together to explain ancient pack dignities so he says, “Swell.”

Derek eventually becomes aware of where he is – lying on an exam room slab. The metal’s cold under his fingertips, against his back. The animal clinic again. Someone, probably Scott, tucked a scratchy brown blanket (he’s pretty sure it’s a kennel blanket) under his head. Scott sits half up on the table, one knee up by Derek’s hip. Deaton, standing behind Scott, leans over his shoulder.

“A very close call, Mr. Hale.” His tone is every disapproving father in existence distilled into speech.

“Bite me,” Derek croaks.

“He’s fine,” Scott enthuses. “He’s always really mean after he almost dies.”

Derek presses one palm against his aching forehead and squints at Scott. The kid’s sitting on the table next to him at this point, sneakers dangling half a foot or so off the concrete floor. Scott looks like absolute shit honestly. There’s blood on his cheek, dirt on his face and clothes. There’s a bandage under his shirt and his hair’s stuck up in what could be bedhead, or the remainder of a fist fight that went to the ground. He smells like shift, sweat, and dried blood.

“Guess it wasn’t bullshit,” Derek murmurs.

Scott’s smile gets complicated. “I guess not.”

“Is everyone okay?”

“Yeah. Deaton did this thing with mountain ash. I totally didn’t even notice. Basically the whole building is made out of it and if he closes any door in the building it, like, can be a mountain ash seal.” He looks thrilled and deeply impressed. “So everyone is sleeping in the break room.” When Derek doesn’t seem enthused about Deaton’s ability to magically cage his own kind, Scott adds, “Oh, and it looks like someone hired a mercenary to be your body guard.”

Derek blinks. “Come again?”

“Yeah. She’s in the waiting room with a shotgun. She keeps saying she needs to talk to you about renewing her contract.”

Derek blinks, but slower. He looks at Deaton, the only other adult in the room and he just shrugs unhelpfully.

“She’s the one who helped you at Erica’s house,” Scott elaborates. “Her name’s Braeden. She says she likes your shirt.”

Derek glares at his shredded PARTY IN THE USA shirt.

“Okay.” He closes his eyes. “Gimme a minute.”


	5. Chapter 5

“So, let me get this straight,” Stiles says slowly. “Last night, we were all attacked by bunch of psycho –” (“Deucalion is _not_ a psychopath,” Deaton says.) “– mass murdering, no, _pack_ -murdering alpha werewolves who believe in their fuzzy wolfy hearts–” (“ _Fuzzy_?” Scott whispers.) “—that they can eat their own betas and absorb –” (“I said nothing about cannibalism,” Deaton interrupts again, exasperated.) “– _absorb_ their power for themselves! And for some reason they want Derek to be a pack-slaughtering serial killer like them –” (Derek shudders and says, “That’s not happening.”) “—so they can… what? _Relate to him_ and bring him into their mass murdering werewolf club?”

Silence in the Beacon Hills Animal Clinic.

Stiles does a kind of full-body flail of rage and disbelief. “ _Is that what you’re telling me_?!”

Deaton sighs. “Essentially.”

“Great!” Stiles flings himself down in one of the waiting room chairs, tossing his hands up. “Glad we cleared that up…” He kind of gestures listlessly. “Derek? You wanna –?”

Deaton’s waiting room – the only room with enough chairs to accommodate everyone – is packed with teenagers in various stages of dishevelment. Allison brought everyone a change of clothes, toiletries, and two duffel bags of werewolf-themed weaponry, but that hasn’t alleviated the sense of dread and refugee-ism. They’re all staring at Derek.

Everyone except the woman with the shotgun. The woman with the shotgun – Braeden – just goes ‘ha!’ and gets herself another coffee. Braeden is five feet, six inches, and about one-hundred-thirty pounds. Dark complexion, definition in her arms. She’s three Keurig coffees deep into this morning, has two handguns, a KABAR knife, the 12-guage, and what looks like a hunting rifle with a scope the size of a thermos. She takes her coffee black.

“Okay, just… one more time,” Stiles says, spinning a finger like he’ll reel the answer from the air. “Who the fuck are you again?”

“Braeden.” She smiles. Her teeth are small and white and even. “I was anonymously contracted in cash to keep Derek Hale alive.”

“Okay. Suspicious,” says Stiles, nodding in an angry kind of way. “ _Why_ are you still here?”

“Another twenty-four hours on my contract,” she says easily. “Unless…you want me and my guns to go?” She gestures to the door with her paper cup of coffee. “Because I can go, but you all seem _desperately_ under-aged and incapable of protecting your alpha. So I feel like I should stick around.”

She sips her coffee.

“She’s charming,” Stiles says, folding his arms. “Isn’t she charming? I’m charmed. Derek, can you _eat_ her?”

“Personally,” Deaton cuts in, “I would recommend hiring her.”

Stiles sputters: “ _Hire_ the conveniently materializing gun lady?”

“No, hire the well-known hunter-network mercenary,” says Deaton mildly. He glances at Allison. “Unless the Argent family is volunteering their aid.”

Here he pauses for Allison to jump in.

“I – I can ask,” she says, looking startled. “I don’t know yet. It might make it worse.”

“We could also try to talk Deucalion out of recruiting you,” Scott suggests.

Derek’s head jerks up.

“Do _not_ try to talk to this guy, Scott. Ever. They will tear you apart. Do you understand me?” And when Scott, stares at him, wide-eyed, he snaps, “Don’t give me that look, tell me you understand what I just said to you. Swear you won’t try to talk to them. _Now_.”

“Uh… okay, Derek. I, uh, I swear. I won’t.”

Derek relaxes but only a little.

“We’ll just convince the Argents,” Scott recovers. “Get them to fight the alpha pack. No way they’ll let a bunch of murderers run around their town biting people. You just, like, train these guys and we’ll convince the Argents to help.” Derek’s face says everything but Scott just doubles down. “Look, I know the Argents aren’t your favorite people –”

“No shit,” Derek grits.

“— and I know you hate them and I get it, but please? Let them help. I’ll convince them. Just give me time. It’s fine.” Derek can’t decide if he wants to rip Scott’s throat out for his dumb optimism or let himself buy into it. “Derek, does that work?”

“Fine. Just… talk to the Argents. But do it through Allison and Chris.”

“Right,” Deaton says. “So hiring outside help is still an option if Derek thinks it’s wise.”

Everyone looks at Derek again.

It makes him want to tear his own face off honestly, all of them looking at him.

“I’ll think about it,” he says. “Until then, Braeden, is it? Can you take a walk and check they aren’t all hiding in the bushes or something?”

She nods once, then slings her rifle over her shoulder and exits the building, humming to herself. He hears her rack the 12-guage as the door closes behind her. Then it’s just Derek, Deaton, and the room full of teenagers. Three of the six teenagers in question are staring at him in a way that’s moving beyond fear and into a restless sort of _wanting_ – for reassurance, for protection, and… other things they probably aren’t consciously aware that they want from him, but do because their wounds have all healed over and their scents have changed.

“Hey,” Boyd says finally, “can we talk about the fact that I’m a fuckin’ werewolf now I guess?”

Silence follows like a gut-punch.  

Derek for the life of him cannot fathom where to begin with that. Before he can figure it out, Isaac looks up from where he’s kind of staring hard into the top of Erica’s messy bun. He’s sitting on the back of the couch with his sneakers on the cushions, Erica and Boyd sitting on the sofa properly. He looks better now, color in his skin, less skinny than he’s always been. He didn’t bother wiping off any of the blood from last night.

“Derek, Scott said that the alpha who bites you can call you out against your will.” Isaac says this very calmly, expressionless, but in a way that doesn’t match the rabbit-heart race of his pulse. “Is that gonna happen to us? Is that woman going to call us out?”

Erica’s got her hand in Boyd’s lap, gripping his hand so tight the bone in her knuckles stands white in her fist. Both of them are kind of sitting on Isaac’s feet. They stink a little, all three of them. Unwashed teenagers who scrubbed blood off with bathroom handsoap and baby wipes last night. Isaac’s wearing a pair of what Derek assumes are Chris Argent’s jeans and a sweater. Erica’s staring at him in a way that make Derek want to snarl at her, because it’s this look like she might go for his throat or just latch onto him and refuse to let go. Boyd… Boyd’s weirdly calm. It’s reassuring for some reason.

“She’s going to try,” Derek starts to say.

 _“You should have just bitten us yourself!”_ Erica explodes.

Derek, who sensed that might be coming, looks at her. “Yeah?”

“ _Yes_! If you’d been the one who bit us, then we wouldn’t have this problem! After all that bullshit about not wanting to bite us, about how we’re too young or too stupid or too weak or whatever the fucking problem was and now this bitch just runs in and bites us all anyway!?” Erica starts to get up (possibly to claw at him) but Boyd tightens his hold on her hand and Isaac reaches down and put a palm down on her shoulder. She settles but just barely. “She bit us just to fuck with you so it’s your fault anyway. You should have just bitten us yourself.”

Silence again. Deafening. Scott and Stiles and Allison staring uncomfortably at the ceiling.

Derek waits. Then, “You done?”

“Fuck you,” Erica snaps.

“Okay. And?”

“Your shirt is fuckin’ stupid,” she mumbles. Derek, who is still in the blood-stained PARTY IN THE USA shirt, gives her an _aggravated_ look. “Yeah, I’m done.”

“Okay. Do all three of you understand what I’ve said so far?”

The new kid, Boyd, clears his throat.  

“Y’all are werewolves. You’re an alpha werewolf which means you’re a boss werewolf who can bite people and make them werewolves.” Boyd inhales and exhales heavily. “Last night, we got attacked by another alpha werewolf who bit us and now, supposedly, we’re werewolves too.”

“Derek,” Isaac says again. “Kali bit us so she is our alpha now. Right? Technically? That means she can control us.” His expression cracks a little. “I don’t _want_ her to call me – to call us out. What do we do?”

“I won’t _let_ her call you out,” Derek growls. He folds his arms more tightly, feeling his own breathing restricted by his efforts to keep it even and visibly unaffected. “She attacked you to bait me into being your alpha and –” His words catch unexpectedly. “– to protect you. They’re banking on me taking you as pack to protect you.”

“Pack?” Boyd says, eyes focusing. He looks at Derek with more interest suddenly. “You keep saying that. What’s that mean?”

“It means different things for different alphas. For me, pack is supposed to be family. People you trust. People you’d die for. People who’d die for you.” Scott’s looking at him, but this is for the three new wolves on the couch so Derek focuses on them. “If you want the technicalities – a pack is a group of werewolves who are bound to an alpha or an alpha pair. I can’t explain what that _really_ means, but if you were bound to me as pack then I’d be made stronger by you and you’d be made stronger by me. Alphas are most powerful when they have a pack and vice versa.”

“You stopped a speeding car with your bare hands,” Erica says. Her gaze on him keeps brightening. “You’re saying that’s the _wimpy_ version of being an alpha?”

“I stopped that car with my ribcage, actually, but okay. Sure.”

“So, what? With a pack you’d have healed faster?”

“No, Erica. If I had a pack, I would have been able to stop that car with my bare hands, pick it up, and throw it.” When that gets him a blank set of surprised stares, Scott included, Derek just lifts his eyebrows. “You thought I was kidding or something?”

“So pack is like family?” Boyd repeats, focusing on that for some reason.

Erica looks at him, brows knitting slightly. She nudges Boyd but he doesn’t seem to notice, still staring at Derek like he hadn’t seen him properly before. Isaac doesn’t seem to have noticed Boyd’s behavior. He’s still looking at Derek with this kind of blank intensity that Derek doesn’t know what to do with because he can _feel_ his stare on the edge of his mind, like a hand against the inside of his skull, like a sudden itching in his palms. Erica pulls differently at him – like a loop of gold around his wrist. An ache in his teeth somehow. Boyd… Boyd’s like a spot of quiet in a room that’s deafening.

“Pack means you fight for each other,” Derek says, rubbing his eyes. “It means…” God he’s so fucking _tired_.

“It means we’re gonna stand together?” Scott supplies, stepping forward. He glances at Derek for reassurance, then goes on. “We’ll fight for each other. Yeah. We won’t let ‘em get you. Promise.”

“Thanks, but isn’t that up to Derek?” Boyd says.

“Yeah, uh, it _is_ ,” Scott says, moving sideways to kind of stand awkwardly next to Derek. He folds his arms. “It is up to him.” It takes Derek a moment to register that McCall is mimicking his posture. Oh God. He’s trying to be _supportive_. “I’m just saying.”

Derek, again, feels so fucking tired. He exhales and pats Scott the shoulder, then moves forward. He crosses the room and takes a seat on the coffee table in front of the couch facing Erica and Boyd and Isaac. They all tense up as he folds his hands between his knees, elbows braced against the top of his thighs. He makes a quick study of their faces – anxious and young and he thinks everyone is too fucking young.

“I’ll take you as pack, if you want me to. It’s the only way I can think of to stop Kali from calling you out. The only other option would be keeping you in locked up to prevent her forcing a transformation on you. You need to know: this is exactly what they want.” Isaac slips down from the top of the couch so Erica’s seated between him and Boyd. Derek rubs his hands together, sighing. “They _want_ me to make you pack because they want me to kill you.”

“You won’t do that,” Isaac says immediately, with a conviction that shocks him.

Derek stares at him for a beat. Then refocuses and goes on.

“You need to know; this is fucked up. This isn’t how I would ever build a pack. I _don’t_ know if I can mentor three high schoolers and somehow fight off Deucalion. I’m not ready. And you’re too young.  And it’s not fair they they’re doing this to us.” He scans their faces, matching the race of each heart to its originating chest. “But none of that matters… because they don’t have an ounce of fucking pity for any of that.” Derek’s jaw aches from the tension there, in his teeth and in his bones, the undercurrent of instinct telling him to bare fang. “They’re targeting us _because_ we’re young, because they think we’re easy prey.”

Erica’s mouth pulls slightly, curling back from her teeth.

“I don’t think we are,” Derek says. He lets his fangs drop, but without drama, just to show it’s easy. He lets his eyes glow alpha-red, testing, and three pairs of beta-gold eyes kindle in response. “People who hurt my last pack… they’re all dead.” He can still feel Scott staring at him, feel his low-watt disapproval but he doesn’t care because Boyd leans in and Erica’s fingers twitch a little with some repressed instinct to move. “If you’re with me, I promise to kill them or die trying.”

Isaac snorts. “Is it always violence first with you?

“I stick to my strengths, Lahey. Is that good enough?”

Erica breaks first. Her hands twitch forward, hooking her fingers into Derek’s.

“Fuck it,” she says. “I told you to bite me weeks ago. Do I have to do anything? Say anything? Abracadabra I’m in the Hale Pack?”

Derek shakes his head. “No. You’re in.” And when she frowns he says, mildly, “Don’t you feel it?”

She blinks. Then she stops frowning. Then her mouth opens and she stares at him, dark eyes widening and brightening, her breath catching suddenly as her hands tighten arounds his.

“Is that _you_?”

He shrugs.

“Oh my god,” she says, staring at her own hands, a manic wonder rising in her face. “Oh my god. What the fuck? That’s…” She starts laughing. She laughs until tears run from her eyes and turns her hands to hold him palm-to-palm and she says, “I’m never gonna have another seizure am I?” When Derek shakes his head she laughs and ducks forward, bumping her forehead against his. “Fuck the alpha pack!” Derek rolls his eyes, but lets her lean against him, her fingers laced golden through his, an invisible line drawn taut between them and humming to an unfathomable pitch. She laughs again, high and breathless. “How about I kill them right back?”

“That’s too dangerous,” Derek says calmly.

Boyd, emboldened by Erica, lays a hand over hers, fingers pressing electric whorls against Derek’s knuckles. “Okay. What do I do –?” he starts to say, but Erica grabs Boyd by the wrist and guides his hand against Derek’s right forearm, just below his elbow, fitting it there. “Just…?” He blinks. Blinks again, eyes lit up from the inside. “Oh shit,” he says. “The _fuck_ ,” he says. He stares at Derek the way someone looks at an ocean, like he goes on for miles. “What the hell’s inside you, Hale?”

Derek tilts his head at the turn of phrase. “Every alpha’s connected to something. Otherwise, we’re just like any other wolf.”

“What is it though?”

Derek shrugs. “What does it feel like?”

“Feels like a stadium of people looking at me. Feels like…” He shakes his head. “I dunno. And I dunno you either, Hale. But …” Boyd laughs. It’s nothing like Erica’s laugh. “There’s not a fuckin’ person in my life that’s ever offered to die fighting for me. So… fuck it. Am I in?”

Derek gives him a tight smile. “You’re in.”

Isaac, at that point, just puts a hand on Derek’s other wrist. He shrugs. “I’m just sick of being fucked over.” His eyes brighten until they’re wolf-light gold. “Teach me to kill them back?”

Derek says, “Always.”

Scott, finally, breaks his silence.

“Guys?” He says it so quietly Derek almost misses it.  

Derek _feels_ McCall withdrawing. Feels him pull back from Derek’s promise to _kill_ his way through the alpha pack. It’s enough of an ache that he turns his face from Erica, looks at Scott though alpha-red eyes. The other beta’s backed up to stand with Allison and Stiles, arms folded protective across his middle. The two humans each have a hand on his arm and shoulder respectively.

“You know… I can’t do that,” Scott says. “I won’t.”

“That’s your decision,” Derek says. Erica, annoyed by the loss of proximity, bumps her cheek against his jaw, pushing forward until her head’s resting against his shoulder. Isaac and Boyd seem content to stay seated but they both have a grip on his forearm now, palm to wrist, skin-to-skin, holding onto him. Scott shivers, consciously pulling back from the sudden magnetic pull when Derek stares directly at him. His eyes glow gold, the wolf in the kid calling to the wolf behind Derek’s stare. “Do what you want, Scott.”

“We don’t have to kill anyone,” he insists.

“Kali cut my throat open,” Isaac says, swinging his head to look at Scott too. If he’s a little high off the sudden overwhelming connection to the pack, the effect seems to be a kind of comfortable apathy. He smiles a little, and it has fangs this time. “Sorry if I don’t feel like rolling over and letting her do it again, McCall.”

“That’s not what I’m saying.”

“I don’t get you,” Isaac says. “You’ve been a werewolf for months, but you’re not in a pack? You’re not part of this?”

“You don’t –” Scott starts to say ‘ _know, Derek’_ but visibly realizes that dividing the fragile truce here is the last thing to do and corrects with, “You don’t know what I’ve been through. I don’t _want_ to be in a pack.”

“Then why did you ask Derek to stay in Beacon Hills?”

“Because I needed help.”

“Then join the pack.”

“He did,” Derek says, quietly. “He’s backing out.”

Scott raises his voice. “Because you guys are talking about killing a bunch of people! Remember?!”

“Hey, whoa,” Stiles chimes in, kind of getting between Scott and the increasingly hostile pack of werewolves on the couch. “Let’s just all calm down here. Scott, look, murder is not the item of the day or whatever. I think what Derek and the wolf puppies are getting at is that… self-defense is a thing and they’re going to do that. Right, Derek?”

“No,” Derek says blandly. “Scott's right. I’m gonna rip Duke’s fucking throat out.”

“Aye, _not_ helpful. I hate you.”

Erica glares. “C’mon McCall. You with us or what?”

Boyd, who has one hand free, holds it out to Scott.

“Here,” he says and Scott physically steps back, frightened. Boyd blinks. “What? You’re pack too right?” He reaches his hand a little farther, almost worried. “You really gonna back out? _Now_?”

“I will if you’re all planning to kill people.”

Derek glares. “I am. I’ll kill my way through every single one of them if I have to.”

“You said that just because we’re predators, doesn’t make us monsters –”

Derek lunges to his feet, spinning to face him. “THEY _ARE_ MONSTERS, SCOTT.”

Scott whips away from Derek, eyes going yellow, fangs dropping and Derek, in his peripheral, sees Stiles grab a random utensil from the desk, Allison go for the knife of her hip. For a moment, the air shivers silver in his throat, holding the residual harmonics of an Alpha Voice. Scott, who’s never heard Derek’s Alpha Voice, looks a strange cross between afraid and hurt and Derek can't figure out why that look makes him want to put his hand through a wall. Behind him, Erica, Isaac, and Boyd are all on their feet. Scott looks at Derek, then the three wolves behind him, then back to Derek again.“Then I’m not with you,” he murmurs.

Derek feels that, like a fist in his chest, pulling something free from its moorings. “ _Fine_. I killed Peter for you. I’ll kill the Alpha Pack too. Just stay out of my way, Scott.”

 

The front door jangles. Braeden, with her rifle still over her shoulder, takes in the room – fangs and glowing eyes and almost-armed teenagers. She closes the door behind her.

“Oh, good. Pack drama. So, am I hired or what?”

Derek pulls his eyes away from Scott and says, “We need a better hide out. We can’t cower in Deaton’s back office.”

The merc grins. “Good idea. Got a place in mind, Hale?”

“I do.”

***

“You bought the building?” Braeden repeats.

Derek, unlocking the security doors at the foot of the four-story warehouse, glances over his shoulder at her. She, Allison, Scott and Stiles are all standing in front of Braeden’s SUV looking at him funny. He pops the padlock from the chains with his bare hands. When the four of them persist in staring at him, he turns back to the door and mutters.

“ _Technically_.”

Stiles, wholly possessed by disbelief, yells, “Don’t you live in your _car_?”

Allison rolls her eyes. “ _Stiles_.”

“How do you have money?!” Stiles shouts.

Derek shoves the heavy doors open, knocking dust from the slam-bars on the other side. He turns around, glaring. “Did you idiots think I was actually homeless?”

“I mean –” Scott starts to say at the exact moment Stiles blurts, “Yes. Exactly that, Derek. Why didn’t you tell us you were independently wealthy, Mr. Moneybucks? When did you acquire your vast and shady werewolf fortune? Because, technically, you were sleeping in a weird shack, have no job, and shower at 24 Hour Fitness. Thought I didn’t notice.” He points violently. “I did!”

Braeden just slides past Derek into the building, eyebrows arched. He catches her whispering “ _Woooow_ ,” as she scoots by.

Derek hates teenaged boys, he’s decided.

“No, but… seriously though,” says Scott. “Did you… steal the money or something?” 

“Yes,” Derek says, deadpan. “I’m a bank robber, Scott. I’ve stolen millions.” Then, when Scott’s eyes widen: “No, you _idiot_. My mom was a fucking CPA. I have a saving account and a checkbook, like a functional human being, which you’d have guessed if you weren’t twelve.”

“First of all,” Stiles says loudly, “you’re _not_ a functional human being, Derek, you live in a shack. Second, I figured you were an expert at credit card fraud. Third, _no one_ has a checkbook these days. How _old_ are you, grandpa?”

“Old enough to know you need checkbooks from time to time, you moron. Why was _credit card fraud_ you first thought?”

“Because you are intractably sketchy and hobo-like, Derek! Also, a former felon.”

“I was cleared of all charges.”

“Whoop-dee-fuckin-doo.”

“You’re the weirdest alpha I’ve ever met,” Braeden says, walking back through the door to get another duffel bag. She slings it over her shoulder, looking speculatively among their company. “You. Argent. You look capable and drama-free. Help me stage inside. Hale, stop bickering with the children. We need to get this place defensible. So, we got electricity in here or what?”

“I’ve got a generator upstairs,” Derek says. “This building is up for demolition and renovation in a year. We won’t be bothered.”

“Love working with wolves,” says Braeden. She winks at him. “Pack money.”

He does not return her smiles. “Follow me. There’s a cargo elevator in the back. It’s the only way up.”

Braeden follows him to the back of the warehouse level and climbs into the elevator with him. The ancient platform groans beneath them, beginning its grind upward. Derek says nothing as the elevator rises, dusty shafts of morning light penetrating gaps in the barrier grating.

“Did you really buy the building?” Braeden asks, not looking at him.

Derek ignores her.

“I can just look up the land management records.”

He ignores her.

“If you don’t own the building, what assurance do we have that –”

“Part of the contract in my investment was that I handle all security and access for the site until the time of demolition. I’m in charge of this property until it demolished. We won’t be bothered.”

He goes back to ignoring her, but can feel her eyeing him the whole ride up.

The elevator lurches to a halt at the top floor. The loft is massive – high ceilings, a grid of dirty pane glass windows taking up the entire opposite wall, illuminated by the mid-morning sun. The floors, thick oak panels coated in dust, still carry the trace boot-prints of his previous visitations. There’s a stack of storage trunks, a generator, and rolls of paint-stained canvas sheets. All his immediate self-storage supplies. Derek waits for her to finish taking it in.

“Okay, okay. I can see the former glory.” Braden turns her back to him, moving to close door behind her. “Anyway, let’s talk terms. If you want to buy me out for an indefinite security job, then we need to –”

Derek slams his forearm into the back of her neck, pinning Braeden face-first against the door. His claws find the base of her spine and mercenary goes still instantly. He’s leaning his full weight on her, body-to body, her against the wall, him against her. This close, he can feel her pulse in her neck where its pressed against his forearm, feel her breath through her teeth. He ducks his head down slightly to speak.  

 “Move and I will put my hand through your spine.”

His voice has teeth to it.  

Braeden, to her credit, doesn’t scream. Her heart’s rushing. There’s anxiety in her scent, rising off her skin and if he buried his face in her hair and inhaled he could probably pull out half a dozen small, nuanced details in the aroma. But overwhelmingly… he can’t smell panic. She looks at him, eyes flicking up and down.

 “You gonna do something ungentlemanly here, Derek?”

He freezes. Just for a split second, pulse jumping in his throat. 

“No? Okay, big guy. That’s fine then, but let’s take it down a notch.”

He just glares at her, then unholsters her handgun from her thigh and tosses it across the room. He tugs her hunting knife from her belt, flips it to examine the sigils cut into the pommel then throws it blade-first into a support beam by the far window. He keeps one arm against the back of her neck, but she doesn’t seem inclined to fight him now, just standing, waiting while he disarms her and pats her down her ribs for a side holster.

“Look, Hale, I get it. You’re nervous about me.” He bares teeth at her. She walks that back. “I mean… you have some questions. I can answer them. The manhandling isn’t necessary.”

“It is if I decide to kill you if I don’t like your answers.”

She remains remarkably calm in the face of his threat. “That’s fair. You’re a new alpha and there are at least four new betas looking to you for protection, so I get it, okay? Just relax a little.”

He snarls. “Be less condescending and answer me. Is someone paying you to spy on me?”

“No, Hale. I’m not here to spy on your or betray you in any way.” She sighs when he maintains the alpha red behind his stare. “Look, I was hired on a short job through a hunter anon network. I get hired for wolf jobs all the time, usually by alphas, but Deucalion didn’t hire me to mess with you.” She meets his stare through her hair. “Right? That’s what you’re thinking?”

“You show up out of nowhere, show up just in time, somehow manage to fight Kali off and get away safely. That doesn’t add up. How could you have _possibly_ been hired in 48 hours and known where and when Kali would attack? I didn’t even know she would attack the kids. How did you?”

“Because the person who hired me, told me. It was in the confirmation email.”

“Then it was one of Duke’s pack. They’re the only ones who could have known.”

“If that’s even true, then I’m curious which of his pack felt shitty enough to betray their leader.” She continues to meet his gaze head on. “Listen to my heartbeat, Hale. Listen: I’m not here to fuck with you. I’m not here to hurt you or those kids. I’m here to do a job and if you hire me, then I’ll watch your back. You hear anything in there I’m lying about?”

No. there’s nothing. No tick, no hitch, no race and recede. She smells like gun powder, deodorant, wolfsbane, natural oils, and something else, a raw earthy smell… like almonds but more bitter. He’s still got his arm on her neck, feels he should be letting her go he can’t seem to get the signal from his head to the relevant portions of his body. He just stands there, tense, looking for something (anything) in her scent – some carry of emotion or intent that Kali or the other alphas carried, something to link her to them but it’s just…

“Why’s your hair smell like that?”

“My what now, creepy?”

“What is it?”

“I don’t know _what_ you’re smelling. My last shower was forty-eight hours ago.” A beat. She sighs loudly. “Okay. Uh, I use shea butter in my hair in the morning, I guess. Is that what you’re talking about?” She squints. “Why are you asking?”

“One… one of Duke’s people smelled like that. You smell the same.”

“Was she black?”

Derek blinks. “What?”

“Was she black?” She gives him a really aggravated look when he just looks confused. “Are you gonna kill me cuz I have good hair care habits and maybe some pack witch does too, because I’ll tell you, that will come across a little racist. So…”

“I couldn’t see her face.”

“Oh no?”

“No. Her face wouldn’t focus. Like on TV when they blur out someone’s face.” Braeden visibly digests that information, brow creasing. “So it wasn’t a ward, if it was a ward then I wouldn’t have been able to look at her at all. This was different. She was looking right at me and I couldn’t see her.” Derek grits his teeth. “And you _smell_ like her.”

“No I don’t. If I did, you would have _ripped_ my throat out. The witch hexed your eyes. If I _was_ a her, don’t you think I’d do better than just hiding my face? Huh?” She hesitates, glaring at him, then adds, “I have to point out, if she hexed you so good you couldn’t even see her face, then there’s any number of fucked up things she could have done as well. That kind of thing takes some prep time and… proximity. How long did you fight with those alphas? How do I know _you’re_ not all fucked up and cantripped and shit? Huh?”

She’s right. Obviously. Derek knows he should let her go. His continued non-willingness to move from where he’s got her pinned is reading wrong now, but he still doesn’t move.

She stares at him. Her eyes are hazel and hold, weirdly, no anger.

“Derek.” He can’t read the tone in which she says his name. “I’m not your enemy. I’m just some merc with a gun. That’s easy. Listen to me. _Listen_. I’m telling the truth. Pay me to protect your pack and I’ll do it. Pay me for advice and I’ll give it. Duke can’t hire me, because _I don’t kill kids_.” She lets that stand a moment on its own so he can listen to the truth of it. “C’mon, Hale. Ease up.” When he doesn’t move she lowers her voice a little. “Ease up.”

Derek maintains his position a moment longer, stands frozen, held fast by the piece of him that can’t stop _smelling_ that same ground-almond bitter stink, the same one from the room, on her fingers against his fucking mouth and he…  He releases the breath he’s been holding. Then steps back. Braeden stands there until he seems sufficiently settled.

“What’re you’re going rates?” Derek asks.

“Depends.” Braeden rolls over, leans on the door, arms folded. “Does your vast and shady werewolf fortune have cash?”

“I… yes.”

She smiles. “Then we’re good, boss wolf.”

“Don’t call me that.”


End file.
